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MODERN POETS 

AND 

CHRISTIAN TEACHING 



LOWELL 

BY 

WILLIAM A. QUAYLE. 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

DEC 2) 906 

t /} Copyright Entry . 

■Jh^% . J, ^ o U 

©LASSfl A KXc, No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1906, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



CONTENTS 

Prelude — A Chapter on Blood Relatives i 

Lowell — The Puritan 18 

Lowell — As Religious Poet 23 

Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 28 

Lowell — His Method 34 

Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 44 

Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 58 

Lowell — His Passion for Man 73 

Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration and Resolve 81 

Lowell — -His Moral Passion 107 

Lowell — The Grail 121 

Lowell — The Cathedral 132 

Lowell — The Life of Faith 145 

Lowell — L'Envoi 153 



PRELUDE—A CHAPTER ON BLOOD 
RELATIVES 

The preacher is every good man's brother. 
He is God's licensed lover of the best. The best 
men, measures, manners, places, vocations, avoca- 
tions, neighborhoods, doings, sayings, all catch 
his eye and heart, and hold them in loving fealty. 
This it is that makes the preacher's business and 
life unapproachable for beauty. His vocation is 
as stately as Edinburgh, as beautiful as Naples, 
and as bewildering as a great metropolis. He is 
not common man, nor hath common method nor 
intent in life. He comes to help the cause of 
goodness on. He challenges men and women, 
saying, "Have ye seen God to-day ?" He has the 
apostolate for virtue, ethics, Christ, Christianity. 
He belongs to all worlds. He speaks in the vernac- 
ular of the highest thought and love and hope 
and dream. No things lie below his horizon. He 
marches toward the eternal dawn, and so has all 
the daylight along the path he takes. Like Saint 
Christopher, he serves the highest; and his com- 
mission is signed of Christ. Now, seeing the 
preacher is such a man — so boundless in purpose 
and high in his aspirings, and blood relative to 



2 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

the divinities in time and eternity — it can but be 
that he will find himself homesick for the most 
elect fellowship earth supplies. We would think 
it of him in theory, and find it of him in fact. 
This is the halo about a preacher's head — that 
good things beckon to him as familiar friends. 
There is no compliment like that — none. Preacher, 
if you saw Elia going along your street, would 
you not hug up to him ? Or if the broad-browed 
Plato meditated along some academe, would 
you not beat time with your feet to his measured 
goings, and with your brain and heart to his wide 
sayings ? Or if iEschylus, with his winter locks, 
should mumble to himself some strophes from his 
"Agamemnon," would you not listen? Or if 
Francis Bacon read over to himself his essay on 
"Atheism," would you not thank your stars that 
you were there to hear him read it ? Or if Alexander 
Smith were writing "Dreamthorp," or Emerson 
his essay on "Beauty," would you not say the 
day you spent in their society was a marked day 
in your calendar ? A preacher's affiliations are 
princely. He belongs to all fraternities of noble 
worth without the trouble of joining. He is 
born to them. Every high thing fits his hand as 
if it were a sword made for his sole using. Botany, 
astronomy, philosophy, biology, psychology, chem- 
istry, literature, painting, architecture, eloquence, 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 3 

poetry, do not need to plead with him for a hearing. 
He sits an eager auditor to all they have to say. 
When I think what a preacher is, how far and high 
his thought may aspire to soar, how long a journey 
he enters on with his own feet, how unequivocal his 
position on all things pertaining to virtue, how 
certified a champion he is of weakness and worth, 
how God lets him talk about his own and one Son, 
Jesus Christ — then I laugh out loud, nor can for- 
bear my laughter. 

Prayer I assume to be the highest expression of 
the human soul, and next to prayer is poetry. 
As a method of speech, then, poetry is the soul's 
highest form of utterance. What need, then, 
to suggest that poetry and the preacher are necessi- 
tated friends ? I assume that since the apostolic 
days preaching, as preaching, has never soared 
so high as in Henry Ward Beecher. There were 
in him an exhaustlessness and an exuberance, 
an insight deep as the soul, a power to turn a light 
like sunlight for strength on the sore weakness of 
humanity, a bewilderment of approach to the heart 
to tempt it from itself to God that I find nowhere 
else; and it has been my pleasure to be a wide 
reader of the sermonic literature of the world. 
Compared to him, Berry, the English preacher, 
whom Beecher thought most apt to be his 
successor in Plymouth pulpit, and who was 



4 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

invited by that church to such successorship — 
Berry was an instrument of a couple of strings 
matched with Beecher's harp of gold. Phillips 
Brooks cannot in any just sense be put along- 
side him; and Simpson in his genius was 
essentially extemporaneous and insular. Beecher 
was perpetual, like the eternal springs. In Robert- 
son of Brighton are some symptoms of Beecher, 
but they are cameo and not building stone resem- 
blances. Beecher was the past master of our 
preaching art. Storrs and Beecher were contem- 
poraries in the same city. Storrs was a field of 
cloth of gold. Gorgeous he was, and a man of 
might. But you cannot get from the thought 
of effort in him in his effects. In Beecher is no 
sense of effort, any more than in a sea bird keeping 
pace with a rushing ship. As I have seen birds 
sail hour on hour and never flap a wing, and yet 
dig down into valleys, and rise high where the blue 
sky was dappled with its clouds, so Beecher does. 
In him are the effortless music and might of a vast 
reserve of power. Now, this estimate of Beecher 
may be right or wrong. I give it as my estimate 
of him. He has no successor, as Samson had no 
son. Now, how did Beecher stand related to 
poetry ? I urge this concrete case because it 
affords an expeditious way of getting at the vitalities 
of this theme. Beecher never quoted poetry. 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 5 

But Beecher never quoted the Bible, the reason 
being he was not possessed of a memoriter memory, 
just as Joseph Parker was not. But he held the 
Bible in solution as the sea holds salt, or the 
sun holds iron and gold. All things told, it were 
better to be saturated with a thing, and hold it in 
your blood, than to be plastered over with a thing. 
Beecher in his earlier Plymouth pulpit days 
preached Bible, its spirit, urgency, central loveli- 
ness, light, penetration, not less certainly because 
he seldom gives an exact phrasing from the book. 
He does the same with poetry. Neither from 
hymn book nor volume of anybody's poetry do 
you hear Beecher quote; but he is soaked with 
poetry. He is a poet. 

Hear him pray, and you must see that. 
In extemporaneous prayer I have observed 
that the actual spirit of a soul becomes appar- 
ent as in no other part of life. When a man 
prays he is, so to say, off guard. He looks out and 
a long way off. Himself is left in the wake like 
the shimmer in a vessel's track. His spirit walks 
without help. Reading prayers cuts the life off 
from its highest opportunity of taking its truest 
flight and highest. So in Parker, nothing is quite 
so noble as his praying; and Beecher — his prayers 
have wings as God's doves do. What music and 
touch of deep truth — only a touch like an angel's 



6 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

wing might give as the angel swept too near a 
child asleep; but the touch was a revelation, 
and was, therefore, sufficient. Beecher was a poet, 
and poets do not need padding. 

The poet sees. That is surely what a preacher 
needs to do. The poet sees the stars and the flush 
on cheek of woman or of cloud, and the dim violet 
and Indian summer and hooting owl, though 
he hides in shadows and the cornfields and the 
marshes by the sea, and the "flower in the crannied 
wall," and the dishevelment of the old ocean, and 
the pomp of autumn, and the needs of men and 
their hungers and their thirsts and their trials 
and their bitternesses and their upleaps and their 
downfalls — sees men and things and fates and 
futures. Know you anything the poets have not 
seen ? Goethe saw, though he knew not that he 
saw it, that sin was its own nemesis. That is 
"Faust." Tennyson saw that environment as 
the explanatory cause of life was frivolous, and 
wrote the "Idylls of the King." Wordsworth 
saw the hills and Rydal Water, and learned the 
wonder of them by heart; and some of us have 
loved him for the thing he did, and shall love him 
all our days. In a vile age Edmund Spenser saw 
that virtue alone was beautiful, and wrote "The 
Faerie Queene," than which no sweeter proclama- 
tion has ever been made of the white beauty of 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 7 

truth and goodness save by Jesus only. One of 
the elect spirits of the world, who had kept his 
life white, a devotee of duty, who had been in elbow 
touch with England's greatest ruler, Oliver Crom- 
well, who, when he saw the Puritan defeated not by 
arms — the Cavalier could not do that — but by 
the insane hunger for a king, when his blindness 
made his life a starless night yet not so dark he 
could not see great Cromwell exhumed and hung 
on high for villainy to laugh at, when himself 
thought each step coming to his impoverished 
door was an officer's step which meant his arrest, 
then he gloomed his great soul in the tragedy of 
"Paradise Lost." He housed all the Puritan 
failure in that gloomy, glorious house, but came 
to his larger self once more and strove to write 
"Paradise Regained," which should in reason 
have blazed with glory, but did not. He could 
not so rise from eclipse. Those poems are the 
story of a great spirit in eclipse, struggling yet to 
trample the darkness down and stumble into 
light. Chaucer is a man who sees and enjoys his 
world, and in him is a lusty love of life much 
worthier than the feminine view of life afforded us 
by Meyer. Bryant is the poet of outdoors; and 
we are outdoor folk. Longfellow is the poet of 
indoors and twilights and the lighting of the lamp; 
and there are indoor folk to whom ministers must 



8 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

minister. Poe is the poet of intoxicants, and lives 
in a weird world which we must look full in the 
face as men. Whittier is the man in love with 
goodness, and at one with God, and sure of the 
eternal boundaries of the homeland of the soul. 
Lowell is the scholar breaking into life. Burns is 
a man blurting out his weaknesses and woes and, 
like a selfishness he was, bringing himself upper- 
most at every breath, and yet a man whose words 
had bird song in them; and songs of birds are worth 
more than gold to a roomy life. Dante was sure 
of retribution unless pardon stepped in for a soul's 
release. Sophocles is crushed with a sense of 
something outside ourselves which makes our 
lives. But enough is said to justify my word, 
" The poet sees." Having eyes he uses them, 
which is quite the reverse of most men and women. 
The novelists who write those tender and heavenly 
episodes from common life are simply folks who 
have eyes to see those things we are blind to. The 
preacher should be at one with poets because they 
have seen the land, and all of it. Among them, 
they have missed nothing. If we were to ask 
for a dragoman who should interpret us to earth, 
and earth to us, and leave no lonely cranny 
unvisited, whom should we seek but poets ? They 
have hit all the keys having music in them. They 
have gone wherever life has gone, or nature or 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 9 

God. I think it practically impossible to read 
all of Tennyson, for instance, and not have a wide- 
open eye to nature and to its interpretive quality. 
I think it impossible to read Shakespeare and not 
fall in love with life. I think it rare to find a 
common reader of Shelley without the sense of 
the jar and lack of destination in him, or of Byron 
without a haunting sense of the deviltry of perpet- 
ual selfishness. In themselves, or vicariously, if 
I may so say, poets have been or seen or experi- 
enced the round of life. To be with such sight- 
seers is to fill the soul with windows open on every 
street the wide world has. Preachers use books 
of illustration instead of being books of illustration 
for the simple reason that they were never trained 
to see things and men and wonders. Home-grown 
illustrations are manifestly better than tropic 
illustrations, just as home-grown fruit is best. 
To the seeing eye, the universe is at our door. 
Here is Emerson's value. He is disjointed, mum- 
bling, ambling, but sees things, wades where the 
grasses and flowers and thistles of life are knee- 
deep. Seeing is another name for insight. Insight 
into care, want, humility, foolish pride, sham 
penitence, hid grief, pent-up grief, intemperance 
of attitude, hysteria in static if not in a dynamic 
state, mental parsimony, or mental ill-breeding, 
the hopes which may legitimately be placed in 



io Prelude — Blood Relatives 

man — insight into these things is so major a neces- 
sity with a preacher as to belong to his alphabet 
needs. Where shall he learn them with so little 
sweat and in such royal company as with the poets ? 
The poet feels. And life is feeling. Life is not 
ratiocinative process any more than the world 
is a field of ice. Life scorches. It has volcanoes 
that blister the pavements, and choke the air, and 
summers that thaw winters out, and breed flowers 
and aromas. He who has not felt has not lived. 
The human touch is the touch of feeling. These 
lonely mountain peaks of mind are breeders of 
snow fields, not forests. It is with exertion that one 
convinces himself that Kant was a man. He 
might have passed for a logical or philosophical 
machine. I can hear the wheels turn in him; 
and they need oiling. The frigid zones are not 
marketable as the temperate zones. The mind 
market may be deserted but the heart market is 
always crowded. Christ was a Sun and thawed 
life. There are no ice-bound coasts where Christ 
is risen. The reason why Jesus was not a thau- 
maturgist was that his wonders were spilled out 
of a bleeding, genial, compassionate heart. He 
felt so that he stopped the widow on her way to the 
house where her children and her husband lay 
together dead, and would not let her put her only 
son there yet. "He had compassion on her." 



Prelude — Blood Relatives ii 

Men cannot forget those words. His miracles 
were wrung out of him for pity's sake; and that 
keeps them human, and makes them divine. To 
feel is what changes trees to animals. The hacked 
tree makes no moan; the hacked man bleeds and 
swoons and moans in his stupor of sleep. Feeling 
is the mighty fact of life. He who would have 
ingress and egress with lives must feel. And the 
poets have felt. They among them wear the 
world on their heart. Just as we have seen bell- 
ringers run the gamut of intricate musical compo- 
sitions among them by reaching the bell that held 
the note their music called for, so the poets ring 
out the feeling of this world of hearts, and among 
them have missed no note. David felt; and that is 
why he sobbed out penitential grief which leaves 
no need for any penitent to invent a tear or any 
anguish. He may borrow all of David. His 
sobbing helps the world. Homer had the blood of 
forty thousand battles in his veins, and so has set 
battle for the centuries. The "Iliad" is the battle- 
field of mankind. Tasso had crusaders' marches 
and triumphs and wounds in him, and so "Jerusa- 
lem Delivered" is the crusader's epic. It matches 
the crusade of soul to this last hour. Homer 
had innumerable adventures in his breast, and so 
wrote the "Odyssey," which is the laureate poem 
of adversity and adventure and discovery, and 



12 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

will have no competitor. Ulysses lives forever 
the antagonist of angry seas and foreign shores. 
Jean Ingelow felt, and so has found the heart of 
life listening to her. Mrs. Browning felt with that 
wild wonder of a woman's love, and so man and 
woman want her as they want a mother. Keats 
felt aspirations, dim, dreamy, unclassifiable; and 
he makes a sky for dreams to soar in. How does 
life feel ? Well, poets know. Life does feel — 
are we always very sure of that ? Jesus was; 
and Jesus was chief of poets. The poets are, if 
I may put it so crudely, a hospital ward in which 
lie all the feelings of mankind, and walking through 
that ward you shall hear the laments and paeans 
life is capable of. The preacher who does not 
feel sin, and feel woe, and feel heartache, and 
feel the anguish the penitent knows, and feel 
the hunger which eats into the flesh, and feel the 
laughter a child and a lover exult in, and feel 
the progress of heart from lower to higher, and 
feel the languor which makes men fall asleep 
while they walk the road with their knapsacks on 
their shoulders, and feel that life needs heartening, 
and feel that life is competent for help — that 
preacher might as well be dead. 

The poet has dealt with the most vital problems. 
And the preacher, provided he be true to his legacy 
of divine serviceableness, has the most vital of all 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 13 

vitalities to present. He and the poet, then, 
are close of kin. I think to illustrate the truth 
of this proposition from one poet, Browning. 
Browning has dealt with divorce, marriage for 
position, heredity, environment, and the failure 
of both in both directions, sin as palpable and a 
monstrous fact, forgiveness, hypocrisy self-justified, 
the failure for the largest by the lack of deep feel- 
ing, the passion and power of music, the defect 
of the artistic temperament, motherhood, herohood, 
old age beautiful and beneficent, old age crabbed 
as gnarled wild crab apples in early autumn, 
lust, scholarship, humbuggery, intellect, the poet, 
smirched virtue, conscience, consciencelessness, 
love, bewilderment, life as a whole, duty, unknown 
helpers of life, love above position, the moral sense, 
natural theology, Christ, belief in God, triumphant 
optimism, joy in life, husbandhood, wifehood, 
longing, hope. His soundings are deep, and 
stretch over wide areas of the sea of the soul. He 
dredges where he sounds. I have not enumerated 
his themes, but have suggested a sufficient number 
to indicate how vast the themes he battles with 
unbewildered. The preacher who has the great 
theme would do well to fraternize with those to 
whom great themes are very natural, and who 
live in the same house with vital problems. 

Poets know the soul. I will illustrate this from 



14 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

Shakespeare. I make bold in saying, what I 
run no risk in saying, that no study of psychology 
under any tutor, with dark room of physiological 
psychologist, can compare with a study of Shake- 
speare, for a preacher's help. He knew the soul, 
and walked around through it as a man walks 
through a familiar street risking no hurt because 
he knows the way so well. Shakespeare knows no 
impediments. All roads are open to him. "As 
You Like It," while some preachers might think 
the forest of Arden, and Rosalind, and Jaques 
beneath them and their study, is worth more than 
some dry course on theology or economics. You 
get to know womanhood and manhood in Shake- 
speare. You cannot go from him, in my belief, 
and not be something of a savant in human nature. 
He shows the thing rather than tells it. Coarse- 
ness of nature, fineness of nature, intense thought, 
lack of any thought, honor of dubitative cast, and 
honor which has no lack, the simpleton, the ma- 
niac, the conceited donkey of two legs, the assinin- 
ity of drunkenness, the nemesis of courses of sin, 
the hellishness of sin-mixed genius, the dolt and 
the genius, the gentleman and the libidinous beast 
miscalled a man, the differentiations of vice in 
individual make-up, the clarity of virtue especially 
in women — these and more make Shakespeare the 
preacher's schoolmaster in psychology. 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 15 

The poet is creative. Giving this matter thought, 
that is a distinguished credential. God is chief 
creator as he is chief of everything good. His 
versatility is our amazement and his glory. He 
is the maker, the poet. He is to make all things 
new, and has made all things new. His leaves 
and fruits and ferns and cliffs are creations which 
make words poor in telling their grace and beauty. 
Poets emulate God in their limits. They are men. 
He is God. But what they have created is a fabu- 
lous wealth. "The Faerie Queene" is as certainly 
a creation as a star is, and its light as gentle and 
enduring. In poets is creative genius as above all 
other artisans. They are making so that even 
their rehabilitations are creations, as one may 
know by noting Shakespeare's historical charac- 
ters and studies. Who shall say that Marc 
Antony is not as original a person as Rosalind ? 
Life leaps in the veins of what the poets do; and 
their poems and stratagems and characters are 
fresh contributions to the thought of men. The 
preacher is creative. No sermon is a work of 
art, which is a hewed thing whether from marble, 
wood, or words, but a formed thing, a life which 
grew with urgency like the willows by the stream. 
Not to feel that a sermon is as certainly a creation as 
a telescope or a poem or a book, is for a preacher 
to find himself among the rubbish of the world's 



16 Prelude — Blood Relatives 

camp. Men who hear should feel that whom 
they hear is a creator, and what they hear a fresh 
thing filled with life like a trailing arbutus. For 
a preacher to feel so is to kill the drudgery of 
sermon making, and to lift it to the realm of music 
and sculpture. 

The poets breed inspiration in a life as sunrise 
breeds morning. And do I need to adduce illus- 
trations of this ? I wot not. "Abide with Me" 
was like a first sight of the sea to me. I recall 
its dawn on my heart as if it were not years ago 
in college days but last night. Preachers ought 
to give off inspiration as central suns give light, 
heat, power. A preacher who does not inspire 
is not worth his keep. To inspire means to keep 
close to inspirations. Nor is it to the point to 
say that a preacher has all inspiration in his Mas- 
ter. That is quite true; but it is also true that 
Christ is the poet's Master, and sets the fire a-glow- 
ing in the poet's heart; and as Jesus gladdened 
his eyes by looking on flower fields and fields of 
stars and on the sweet faces of little children, 
while and because he was God's Son and fellow- 
shiped with his Father knowing that God ought 
to exclude nothing from us but include all things 
for us, so preachers are to get inspirations from 
everywhere, and by being in Christ and for Him 
are qualified to get the most out which Christ has 



Prelude — Blood Relatives 17 

put in, just as a musician can best understand 
the music of a master. Poets are one of our Mas- 
ter's ways of saying his say to our souls. 

Therefore of all folks preachers and poets may 
well be the best of friends. The poet is he who 
stands above us nigher to the dawn, and calls 
down, like the old watchers from the temple's 
citadel, "The morning breaketh; day is here." 



LOWELL— THE PURITAN 

Lowell was a Puritan. This is set down with 
immediacy because it explains his character and 
achievement. His ancestors were emigrants to 
America in 1639. They came when only such 
were pioneers as were masterful Puritans. Such 
as expatriated themselves from England in that 
bleak, early day, and came to the bleak inhospi- 
tality of that wintry, sullen shore, were pilgrims 
of truth, were lovers of God and freedom, and 
were given over to the larger notion, and in that 
love found sacrifices pleasant to the taste. Con- 
science piloted those emigrants across the seas; and 
Duty guarded those immigrants. They came for 
righteousness; and they stayed with righteousness. 

Those pilgrim Puritans were vigorous men. 
They cared what God thought. They bulk big 
now, and will while character has charm for brain 
and religiousness and heart. 

The Dutch in 1620 imported slaves; the Puritans 
in 1620 imported character. The difference is 
past computation. Puritanism was robustness. 
A sight of Cromwell gives a sense of massiveness, 
as of a mountain. He was there to stay. Varia- 
bility seemed not to belong to him. And he was 

18 



Lowell — The Puritan 19 

this phase of Puritanism. They were in nothing 
namby-pamby. Gentle they were, but not flabby. 
It is no matter of wonder, to such as look those 
men in the eyes, that the Ironsides conquered 
everybody in sight. Invincibleness was ingrained. 
Nothing scared them. Tyrannies, dangers, winter 
seas, foreign potentates, were as nothing to their 
severe yet steady onward march. They thrill us. 
We are in their hands. Those who can be 
touched by massive personalities are as willow 
twigs in the grip of these remote magnificent 
characters. Some Puritans died on Marston Moor 
and Worcester and Dunbar fields; some of them 
lived to meet the worse than dying under the 
carnal lust of Charles II; some of them came across 
sea or ever swords were drawn for liberty. They 
had battles in their blood, all of them had. They 
were of one blood. God was on them like sun- 
light. They knew whose they were. I covet not 
the mental and moral make-up of those who can 
sit and critically chastise the Puritan, tell glibly 
where his faults lay, and count them as you would 
sun spots. Such people will not thrill when the 
sea is at tempest. They will run home to keep 
the ocean spray from wetting their garments. 

All that touches these battle-mooded lovers of 
purity is pertinent to those who are to study Lowell 
as a religious teacher. He brought his larger, his 



20 Lowell — The Puritan 

elemental nature from them. Their marks are on 
him. He even wears their scars. Hosea Biglow 
is brother to Governor Winthrop. The lapse of 
years has not thinned the blood, but has given 
differing occasion. That is all. In Cromwell's 
day Lowell would have written his stormy poetry 
with a battle pike. That long-spent passion for 
liberty and for man is what marks Lowell always. 
And he knew this in part. He did not know it in 
its totality. It is not given to men to get their 
total actuality. But Lowell knew he was always 
preacher. The moral would work into his 
thought, and so into his poetry. He was not even 
dimly related to heathenism. A Keats's mild 
moonlight of morals was unthinkable to Lowell. 
He was not a Greek: he was a Puritan which for 
the larger uses of the world is the needed commod- 
ity. We want them both. We use them both; 
but if we were, as workmen in the business of 
this brawny world, to do away with either con- 
tribution as working material, we could have no 
moment of hesitant mood as to which it must be. 
The Puritan tense moral and divine attitude is 
essential beyond all art and tragedy and philos- 
ophy of Greece. The ancient world was aesthet- 
ical : the modern world is ethical. The difference 
is all in favor of the modern world. Those 
heathen culturists, who continually weep tears 



Lowell — The Puritan 21 

of dew about the lost beauties of heathenism and 
Greece, will not be found drenched with the sense 
of the moral majesty of man, Man is not a 
picture, nor a statue, but a soul. He is not a 
figure for a metope, but a stature for eternity. His 
ethical value is his regal value. We have not 
fallen behind the Greeks, but have gone beyond 
them. So that the moral bias in poetry or life, if 
it lacks in "art," which is debatable, avails as a 
helper to life. Things are more than picturesque. 
They make or mar the soul. And that is a ques- 
tion not of aesthetics but of ethics. Lowell was by 
force of his personality not of Greek but Puritan 
temper. Therefore is he a religious poet. 

Modern Puritanism has become so washed out as 
to induce a smile. The exodus of the Puritan into 
the Unitarian was as tragical in its outcome as the 
former exodus of the Puritan was epic. That 
loosening of the God-grip on the wrist is respon- 
sible for the fads of the modern puritan (spelled 
with small letters), as distinguished from his 
great forbear (which was spelled with capitals). 
Arlo Bates's "The Puritans" justly satirizes this 
later development. He is just. I hide behind his 
satire not using mine own, lest any should think 
me unequipped for such service. But to see that 
burly, moral majesty of the old-time Puritan degen- 
erated into the modern amusing and unethical 



22 Lowell — The Puritan 

Boston cults is a sight very pitiable. The facts 
are undeniable. The novelist has spoken of things 
commonly known. He gives no hearsay narrative. 
That a Mrs. Eddy should now reign, where 
aforetime were women and men of moral granite, 
is sad as tears. So low are the mighty fallen. 
If the modern Puritan seems gone to shallows, we 
must not be diverted thereby from the heartening 
of the other days when Puritans were brawnier 
than oak. And to that elder day was Lowell 
unconsciously related. Here let this chapter end 
as this chapter began — Lowell was a Puritan. 



LOWELL— AS RELIGIOUS POET 

If one were called on extemporaneously to 
name the religious poets of our English and 
American speech he would probably not name 
Lowell. He does not make strident appeal to us 
so. Tennyson would be in any list; and Edmund 
Spenser would be bound to be there. Milton 
would use his sea trumpet in such an orchestra. 
Robert Browning would smile and sing his way 
into such a feast of trumpets. Whittier with his 
quiet Quaker smile, and his "thees" and "thous" 
and his song like the thrush at evening: 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care, 

must be in this company. No one would be so 
thoughtless as to omit him. But Lowell has put 
his primary impress on us in other realms. He 
is National. His is our one great national ode, 
the "Commemoration Ode." His is "The Pres- 
ent Crisis." His is the country call, the rustic 
cry for freedom in "The Biglow Papers." These 
and kindred poems would, I think, normally give 
impress of his genius, so that we would not at 
first suggest him as a religious poet. We had 

felt him other; and until our thought had been 

23 



24 Lowell— As Religious Poet 

attracted to his hymnic quality we would not have 
given that aspect of his genius other than passing 
heed, and possibly no comment at all. He is not 
a hymn writer. Those gusts of devotion, so 
usual with Whittier, do not belong to him. Pos- 
sibly nothing he has written would allow of such 
musical setting as to walk into the sanctuary. 
This is not a test of his being a religious poet, but 
does express the well-defined difference between 
two New England poets. 

Whittier was orthodox, as we say. He believed 
the basilar truths of Christianity. He could have 
answered at an Athanasian roll call. He was no 
Hicksite, but true Quaker. We feel the heart of 
him warm as a south wind in summer. Lowell 
was, as Longfellow and Samuel Longfellow and 
Holmes, Unitarian — at least so we must judge. 
He was no mild pantheist as Emerson, nor mild 
nothingist as Emerson. Emerson cut himself 
away from even those trammels called Unitarian, 
which could, one would judge, be worn so lightly. 
But if I might be permitted to judge, Lowell and 
Longfellow were Unitarian of the school of Chan- 
ning, and certainly not of Theodore Parker. 

Judging from a careful reading of their lives, 
poets are not apt in theology. Poets go not by 
their thinkings-out of things, but by the blowing of 
the winds of inspiration through their poet lutes. 



Lowell — As Religious Poet 25 

They get their theology from what they themselves 
say, rather than as with the lower of us who make 
our lips say what our thoughts have digged out. 
Inspiration does vagabond things with poets. 
They come at things so wide away from any 
method the everyday man pursues. Tennyson in 
his prose reasoning-out gets bemired; but give his 
genius play, and who can quite equal him amongst 
the stanchest putters of things theologic. If a 
poet sees at all, he is doubly likely to take a hill 
view. His gaze sweeps far and free. He gets 
the great truths, as the sun gets sight of the moun- 
tains. 

We shall not anticipate, therefore, that with 
Lowell we shall have the deluging views of 
Christology for which Browning is famous. 
He will not exult, 

See the Christ stand! 

But theist he is, not pantheist: Lowell is not 
culturist. He saw with too wide-open a soul not 
to see that we shall not get far with culture for 
propulsive power. He saw a schoolhouse was not 
a church, nor could subserve the same purpose. 
The culturist would make schoolhouse mean 
church. Such views are historically inadequate. 
If a poet believes at all, he will, in poet necessity, 
believe something worth while. He may believe 
against God, as Shelley; he may put out the fire 



26 Lowell — As Religious Poet 

of God with his steady, pitiless and yet pitiful 
rain of doubt, as Arnold; he may be atheist, or 
agnostic; he may be to all intents heathen, as 
William Watson, in whose pages never flower any 
holy blossoms which might have grown sudden out 
of the heart of God; or he may be billowed away 
on the wide waters of God till faith makes noon 
light in the night, as Browning; or he may see, 
with Lowell, that, in so far as the life of the world 
and the life of the soul are concerned, God is a 
necessity — may see that no God is unthinkable. 

I think that, with all poetic minds who do not 
turn against God, God is what Samuel Clark 
thought he was, an intuition. Poets do not reason 
God out. They know he is around. As we know 
the sun is here, without asking the astronomers, 
so the souls of the best know God is around. 
They do not query: they assert. As a child 
takes for granted the love of the father, and goes 
to sleep with tousled head pillowed on his breast, 
safe and glad, and with a kiss, so the poets do, 
God must be here, else how dare we fall asleep ? 
We are safe; and how could we be were God not 
around ? Some such way, however incompetent 
my putting, do best poets come to their sense 
of God; as Tennyson implies in his sublime 

dogmatic, 

I have felt. 



Lowell — As Religious Poet 27 

Lowell's father was a Congregational minister, 
and pastor of the West Congregational Church of 
Boston for forty-five years, which was his minis- 
terial lifetime. Lowell's grandfather, John Low- 
ell, was member of the Continental Congress in 
1 78 1, and was appointed by President Washington, 
on the adoption of the Constitution, Judge of the 
United States District Court in Massachusetts, 
and in 1801 became Chief Justice of the Circuit 
Court. All this is pedestal for this: He intro- 
duced into the Bill of Rights the clause by which 
slavery was abolished in Massachusetts. He 
advocated its adoption before the convention; and 
when it was adopted said: "Now there is no 
more slavery in Massachusetts; it is abolished, and 
I will render my services as a lawyer gratis to any 
slave suing for his freedom, if it is withheld from 
him." Which things are set down as indicating 
how, as relates to freedom and religion, Lowell's 
immediate antecedents were as much to his helping 
as was his ingrain of Puritanism from remoter 
yesterdays. In other words, his was a fair start 
toward being a helper and not a hurter of the 
world. 



LOWELL— HIS MORAL ATMOSPHERE 

To walk along a given road by Winter and by 
Spring is two experiences, not one. The road is 
the same; but the walk is not the same. We have 
walked in different worlds. The atmosphere 
made the difference. In Winter, the ways were 
white: the trees stooped under their weight of 
snows: the far and near were shivering with their 
wintry ague: the dust you trod on was dust of snow: 
the tree trunks stood black against their landscape 
of ermine: the crows which cawed their way along 
the sky, flying low, appeared blacker than your 
eyes had ever seen them. The winter atmosphere 
enswathed the world. The crisp snows were 
children of the sky. The air was sponsor for 
the snowdrifts and the nipping frosts and the 
hurry of feet along the accustomed highway. 
The world you walked in was all new, not be- 
cause you had not been familiar with it through 
many years but because a winter sky held it in 
thrall. Another day at springtime you walked 
this same woodland way. The green was wash- 
ing to and fro on the tree tops: the grass had 
sheen like new silk; the brook babbled as it 

voyaged: the voices of the wind were inter- 

28 



Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 29 

fused with the voices of the birds: the musk of 
wood odors and ground odors drenched the air: the 
sky seemed fresh frescoed with bewildering blue: 
violets grew in knots as if they were rooted 
in the soil of paradise: and your step, which 
on the wintry road had hasted, now loitered 
like a lover's feet at wooing. Road the same: 
landscape all new. One road: two landscapes; 
and all was the difference in atmosphere. The 
spring breath — why, man, drink it down! This 
wine never makes drunk, but will make alive. 
Atmosphere counts in the world. We feel a 
world by its sky and wind, and touch of both. 

So poets have their atmosphere. That is every- 
thing. We feel this as we feel the winter wind or 
the spring breeze rocking the willow. And it is 
something half apart from what is said. As man- 
ner differs from matter, so with this air of the 
poets. In Byron, whatever the poet says, you 
feel the same dull, sultry gehenna neighborhood. 
Byron always glowers; he never lifts a song, or 
lightens to a smile. In Poe you feel the eternal 
heartache on him; no matter what he says, the 
raven broods with piercing eyes and sable voice, 
and flings his dreary shadow on the heart. In 
Whitman you feel a crude, coarse soul, which, 
while it has heights to climb, carries to the heights 
the same half-sensual luggage. His open road 



30 Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 

hardly makes you love the out-of-doors, and his 
long catalogue of the outside and inside of man 
scarcely makes him physician or sculptor. You 
feel as if you had been at a post-mortem examina- 
tion but had not been visibly profited thereby. 
In Emily Dickinson's poems you are sitting with 
a lovable woman — much a woman; very quiet 
and greatly given to being alone, and you, unknown 
or else unnoted to her, are with her, she sewing 
and singing poetry, and such as only a woman 
could compose. Her similes are woman similes, 
her thought trend woman thought, and her lift 
of thought, at sudden, unexpected moments, 
like the upleap of a skylark — and as sweet. 

With Frederic Lawrence Knowles you are with 
one who swings out gayly toward the sky, and yet 
has on his face the look of one who feels that on 
that skyline is a grave fresh dug — and for him; 
and still none the less gladly does he make his 
journey. His song speaks of the grave much and 
often, but the somberness of "Thanatopsis" is 
not on his verse. The light of blessed mornings 
is on his face and on his heart, and he hears 
the house a-building he is to dwell in, while 
the deathless years make music sweet and glad. 
Hear his song, "The Tenant," sing; and you 
will say, "This is the glad atmosphere of eter- 
nity : 



Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 31 

This body is my house — it is not I ; 

Herein I sojourn till, in some far sky, 

I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last 

Till all the carpentry of time is past. 

When from my high place viewing this lone star, 

What shall I care where these poor timbers are ? 

What though the crumbling walls turn dust and loam — 

I shall have left them for a larger home. 

What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot, 

When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! 

When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I'll immerse 

My long-cramped spirit in the universe. 

Through uncomputed silences of space 

I shall yearn upward to the leaning Face. 

The ancient heavens will roll aside for me, 

As Moses monarched the dividing sea. 

This body is my house — it is not I. 

Triumphant in this faith I live, and die. 1 

This is the atmosphere of glad eternity. 

Bayard Taylor has the atmosphere of wandering. 
You track him across the world. Far wandering 
beyond any dream Ulysses knew, is this minstrel 
of ours. He is troubadour, is harpist with worn 
harp in hand, grown dusky with the kiss of 
suns and rains. He rides the desert like a desert 

son on 

A stallion shod with fire. 

He camps beneath the palms: he dreams be- 
side the Nile: he drifts under the stars of south- 
ern constellations: all centuries are inhabited of 
him. 



1 From Sunset Poems, by Frederic Lawrence Knowles. Copyright, 
1906, by Daniel C Knowles. All rights reserved. 



32 Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 

The pine rehearses its story, and the pathetic 
Hylas lays urn and purple chlamys at his feet, 
what time he goes to keep tryst with Naiads at 
swift Scamander. 

Much has he traveled in the realms of gold, 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen. 

His atmosphere is the air which swims free 
about the world, nor knows destination or resting 
place. He and the wind be travelers together — 
ever going, never weary. 

So much for atmosphere in general. What air 
do we feel in Lowell ? Genial, human, humane, 
invigorating, hopeful, full of gladness, fleet of 
foot and wing, sympathetic, tender, appreciative 
of woman, understanding of man, gleeful in 
childhood, burdened but not overburdened, open 
to the largest, high of sky, quick in imagery, 
which is another way of spelling quick of sight 
and hearing; air redolent with Some One having 
been along the way, whose name we must learn 
to pronounce or fail in getting at the soul of 
things. This is the Lowell atmosphere, or I mis- 
take what I have all my lifetime been so glad to 
breathe. The atmosphere is moral, Christian, 
recent. You know that this is not heathen singing. 
He is not vague. He does not confound nature 
and God. He knows a tree is not a dryad, but 



Lowell — His Moral Atmosphere 33 

is none the less witching because it is not dryad 
but tree. The trees sing, 

From the pine tops 

A music of seas far away. 

I do not now advert to given poems; I do not 
now even think of given poems. I think and 
speak of my feeling as I think of Lowell; how as 
I have loitered with him many a time, and in many 
a place — under pine trees crooning viking songs, 
by the sea with sobbing in its throat, on prairies 
with the wind blowing far and free, by study 
fire on weary winter nights when the wild wind 
shrieked like raving maniacs — wherever read and 
whatever poem read, I seemed to feel a west wind 
blowing in my face, and that he with whom I made 
excursion had seen the Face, and from that 
illumining had come down helped and glad. 



LOWELL— HIS METHOD 

The writer of this monograph in all cases could 
have given the poet's thought in prose terms; but 
such method would not advantage the poet. The 
poet himself must speak. One verse out of "In 
Memoriam" makes music, and stirs thought like 
the sunrise stirs the world from slumber into 
speech and song and toil. To fail to quote would 
be a crime both toward the great Laureate and 
ourselves. We want his wine in his beaker. So 
it haps that in this brochure whenever in reason 
possible, Lowell's words have been used. The 
purpose of this book is scarcely less to stimulate 
a reading of Lowell's poetry as a whole than to 
show him as a moral and religious poet and 
teacher. From first note to last note, from peep 
of bird at dawn to the last sleepy robin call at 
dusk, this writer would have Lowell read. 

In a poet's own phrasing is a thrill not to be 
understood save on the receiving. How often have 
such as read the sayings of the greater souls felt 
what they can never tell, but in whose memory 
their hearts grow glad in all the after days. Can 
anybody fail to keep as a perpetual benefit the sea- 
sag of some of Edmund Burke's sayings ? They 

34 



Lowell — His Method 35 

rock the soul — then and now. Or can Sir Thomas 
Browne cease his ministry, once having ventured 
on it, for any single life ? Those fascinative 
phrases which with prose music iterate those way- 
ward fancies, those far-soaring thoughts of one 
whose presence makes life more glad. 

You cannot put Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" 
into anybody's phrase but his and not mar some- 
what of its grave, engaging loveliness. The theme, 
the thought, the poise, the repose, that wide-eyed 
wonder in looking at man's chiefest wonder in him- 
self — the quality of duty, who can express but 
Wordsworth ? To tear a single thread away 
seems punishable as a misdemeanor. We rob him 
and we rob ourselves when we tamper with his 
poet phrase. 

The same is true as touching Lowell. He de- 
serves quoting. He comes upon the poet side of 
us. He surprises us into awakening to the sunrise 
of his thought. Sometimes he does this with a 
line, more often by a poem, part or whole. Lowell 
in the main in the sphere dealt with in this book 
is diffuse. You cannot corner him in a phrase, 
just as you cannot corner a prairie by the sky. 
In "Rhcecus," to illustrate, the ethic quality is 
nowhere included in a line or two or more, but 
distills through the poem like a perfume. A sig- 
nificant moral lesson is hidden in the Greek story, 



36 Lowell — His Method 

one of the most significant morals, and this no 
trivial excerpt may catch nor include. The poem 
as a compact whole essentially must swim into the 
sky like a cloud. The same is true of such a poem 
as "Dara." A wise truth is written of therein of 
which no inkling may be had by any extract. In 
instances more frequent the author has been com- 
pelled to pass by such poems as "Dara" and many 
another with a remark where it would be more 
mannerly and just to quote. In other instances 
the insistence of the lesson has seemed to not only 
impel but to compel a complete, or at least 
lengthy, quotation. 

To get a palate in love with the taste of a poet's 
personality in saying things seems to this author 
a worthy effort. That is what we need. Give a 
body a taste of Shakespeare's voice, manner, mirth; 
and you have made one Shakespeare lover more. 
Give anybody's ear a listening for the skylark 
music of Shelley at his best; and thereafter that 
body will require no incentive to attune his ear by 
music of that bird minstrel. Let a man once love 
Chaucer's way of saying things; and he will never 
lose that love. 

With poets, in particular, it is a question of 
voice. It is not so much what they say as how 
they say. In Burns it is all in the way of saying. 
Less or more this is true of all poetry. With 



Lowell — His Method 37 

Browning as with Dante so much is in the thought 
— the solemn onward going to realms which we 
feel strangely aloof and all but utterly remote. 
This is exceptional. Even with them, the voice 
of the singing is in something essential. If we 
select a lyric of Goethe's allowed among his 
admirers to be his lyric wonder, or near to it, we 
cannot fail to see that not the matter but the music 
is main mystery: 

Hushed on the hill 

Is the breeze; 
Scarce by the zephyr 

The trees 
Softly are pressed; 

The woodbird's asleep on the bough; 

Wait then, and thou 
Soon wilt find rest. 

Or this song from "Faust" : 

Like a star, 

That maketh not haste, 
That taketh not rest, 
Be each one revolving 
About his own soul. 

Mere quotables are not a test of poetry. Al- 
lowed. By which is meant the using of a poet's 
lines or phrases as epithets or epigrams in the sense 
that Pope is quotable. He has given aphorisms 
often but poetry seldom. Many a true poet 
requires length to include his thought. And we 
must get the voice. We love to hear voices. Who 



38 Lowell — His Method 

that has lain a summer through with head pillowed 
on the seashore yellow sand and has been wrapped 
in the mellow music of the breathing sea as its 
waters plunge, plunge hour after hour from after- 
glow to morning's first pearl tints across the shift- 
ing water, but must thereafter while life endures 
hold the wide night sea in loving remembrance ? 
Its lullabies have sung them into his soul. 

Two ways of ethical inculcation are prevalent 
with poets. The one is to add the moral as the 
fable writers did, distinctly at the poem's close. 
This is the normal method with the sonnet. Long- 
fellow's sonnet "Nature" is beautiful as twilight: 

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 

Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 

Half willing, half reluctant to be led, 
And leave his broken playthings on the floor, 
Still gazing at them through the open door, 

Nor wholly reassured and comforted 

By promises of others in their stead, 
Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; 
So Nature deals with us, and takes away 

Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 

Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 

Being too full of sleep to understand 

How far the unknown transcends the what we know. 

Emily Dickinson has this: 

I never saw a moor, 

I never saw the sea; 
Yet know I how the heather looks 

And what a wave must be. 



Lowell — His Method 39 

I never spoke with God 

Nor visited in heaven; 
Yet certain am I of the spot 

As if the chart were given. 

This appending a moral is the regulation pro- 
cedure with Bryant, as witnesses the conclusion of 
"To a Waterfowl": 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 

Let it be frankly stated, this is not the roomier 
way. Didacticism and poetry are not best neigh- 
bors. The finished moral method is, as I think, 
found in such a poem as William Morris's "The 
Tomb of Arthur." Through the whole rises and 
falls, surges and bleeds, aches and anguishes the 
remorse that will not hush and cannot die. You 
cannot from it pluck a stanza and get the mean- 
ing. Sob on sob the words rush on, until there is 
written a poem which for moral power has not 
many equals. Or the tender half tear, half smile 
of Saxe Holm: 

Like a cradle rocking, rocking, 

Silent, peaceful to and fro, — 
Like a mother's sweet looks dropping 

On the little face below, — 
Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning, 

Jarless, noiseless, safe and slow; 
Falls the light of God's face bending 

Down and watching us below. 



40 Lowell — His Method 

And as feeble babes that suffer, 

Toss and cry and cannot rest, 
Are the ones the tender mother 

Holds the closest, loves the best; 
So when we are weak and wretched, 

By our sins weighed down, distressed, 
Then it is that God's great patience 

Holds us closest, loves us best. 

O great heart of God! whose loving 

Cannot hindered be nor crossed; 
Will not weary, will not even 

In our death itself be lost — 
Love divine! of such great loving 

Only mothers know the cost, — 
Cost of love which, all love passing, 

Gave a Son to save the lost. 

You cannot get at the tearful melody and wonder 
of this save by its totality. 

This last is Lowell's method. In "The Search" 
may be seen his natural procedure. The moral 
is distilled through the length and breadth of the 
stanzas. The poem is the big thing just as the 
leaves of the tree are the main matter and the 
shadow they cast is the subordinate consideration. 
We would not lightly esteem the shadow, but a 
rock could afford that solace, whereas leaves are 
the tree lips to drink the sunshine and the sky. 
Lowell does not specifically deduce a moral, 
moralist though he is. He includes his moral. 
The result is we must allow him more length of 
statement to get his inculcation than with many 
another. You cannot break his sayings up into 



Lowell — His Method 41 

pnrases as you can divide the goings of a sailboat 
on its waters by its surmounting of wave by wave. 
You cannot by ictus and arsis, beating time, so 
separate a swallow's flight. Lowell must have 
room. Thereby does his worthiness become ap- 
parent, a thing specially true as related to his 
religious teaching. Therefore has this little book 
essayed to let him have his swallow flight or eagle 
sky room. In poems like " Agassiz" and the im- 
mortal odes of American theme this is not per- 
missible; but who would get those deep-throated 
melodies must let the poems have their entirety 
of flight. 

In the main, we must characterize Lowell's 
ethical method as diffuse. It is atmospheric. The 
quality of air is such that it must be bulked to be 
seen, then is it blue as amethyst. Probably, out- 
side the ethical poems, no poem would more aptly 
illustrate this diffuse beauty, palpable everywhere, 
excerptible nowhere, than that New England idyl, 
"The Courtin'." No stanza can you borrow 
which shall bring out the efflorescence of the poem. 
But when read entire, a picture quaint, human, 
humorous, tearful, heartful, eternal in character 
of man and woman and true to the instincts of love 
whether lettered or unlettered, the place, the pur- 
pose, the persons, the fireplace, the sparkles of 
"the wannut logs," the beautifying of the room 



42 Lowell — His Method 

to the lover's eyes because Huldy was in it — all 
there, and so there that we who are lovers must 
ever look upon this "courtin'" as among the quaint 
treasures of poetry: 

Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, 

An' peeked in thru the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 

'ith no one nigh to hender. 

Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 

Fetched back frum Concord busted. 

The wannut logs shot sparkles out 

Towards the pootiest, bless her! 
An' leetle fires danced all about 

The chiny on the dresser. 

The very room, coz she wuz in, 
Looked warm frum floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez th' apples she wuz peelin'. 

She heerd a foot an' knowed it, tu, 

Araspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelin's flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the seekle; 
His heart kep' goin' pitypat, 

But hern went pity-Zekle. 

An' yet she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work 
Ez ef a wager spurred her. 

"You want to see my Pa, I spose?" 
"Wal, no; I come designin' — " 



Lowell— His Method 43 

"To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrow's i'nin'." 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 

Then stood a spell on t'other, 
An' on which one he felt the wust 

He couldn't ha' told ye, nuther. 

Sez he, "I'd better call agin;" 

Sez she, "Think likely, Mister;" 
The last word pricked him like a pin, 

An' — wal, he up and kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kind o' smily round the lips 

An' teary round the lashes. 

Her blood riz quick, though, like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they wuz cried 

In meetin', come nex Sunday. 

Because of this Lowell method, this writer has 
been of the mood to let the poet say his say in 
his own winsome and sometimes wonderful way, 
as he believes Lowell has a right to be heard. 



LOWELL— HIS GOSPEL OF HUMOR 

As may be thought out without the saying, this 
little book has no right to discuss Lowell as a liter- 
ary quantity. I would gladly set me to such 
task, were that allowed by the scope of the purpose 
of this essay. But the aspect with which this 
volume must content itself is the Christian. Not 
what Lowell did as essayist, not what his literary 
rank is or shall be; not that affluence of gift 
wherewith he dowered whatsoever position he 
occupied; not that felicity with which he discovered 
and affirmed the essential in men and manners 
and institutions — not any one of these, however 
enticing, may I enter on. The larger matter is to 
be my text, and limit my comings and goings. 

The religious uses of humor in Lowell are what 
this section of this essay adverts to. And with 
some, the suggestion may not be palatable. To 
those who think the grim look better than a smile, 
and the tear more a fruit of paradise than ringing, 
jubilant laughter, who think a smile desecrates 
the house of God, and that to be somber is to be 
perilously near to piety, the religiousness of humor 
will make no appeal. But that is from the point. 
God invented humor. He may be trusted. Who 

44 



Lowell— His Gospel of Humor 45 

made the instrument may be allowed to have a 
right to choose its stops. God made man the 
one animal with humor; and this gift has distinct 
religious uses. What people laugh at, they will 
remember. And anyone may certify to himself 
how all but incomparable, as an instrument of re- 
form, humor is. You can laugh and weep many 
things out of existence, which the most scathing 
argument could not touch. Humor and irony 
are differing phases of one thing. Humor is 
gentle : irony is severe. When employed by a mor- 
alist of capacity, both are excoriating the same 
vice. "The Biglow Papers" are Lowell at his best 
in many ways. They are rustic: they are rimmed 
with dew and daylight. They run a long, a very 
long scale, from the cricket voice to the battle 
trump. Hosea Biglow is delicious. His words 
smell of the hay, but sometimes of the cannon 
powder. He is homely but virile. The Yankee 
dialect was fit for all kinds of fields — fields plowed 
of corn and fields plowed by cannon. The humor 
of these poems is at times simply riotous. Where 
the flamboyancy of the press is satirized; where 
the hoity-toity affectation of Latin is made butt 
of laughter; where the Rev. Homer Wilbur, with 
his scholar's obtuseness and sedateness, is done 
to the dot, and makes one's sides ache with 
laughter; where the old style of statement and the 



46 Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 

new are contrasted, in the Introduction to the 
second series of "Biglow Papers" : where instead of 
saying "Man fell," the incident is rendered "In- 
dividual was precipitated," and "A great crowd 
came to see" is "A vast concourse was assembled 
to witness;" or where in "Mr. Hosea Biglow's 
Speech in March Meeting" Mr. Biglow attempts 
to subside but cannot. He "tries to avide it." 
He does all kinds of stating and finally misstates 
it. He does all ways, but not, so to say, end- 
ways. He can't end. His "subjic" has plainly 
the better of him. Most of us have sometimes 
been in Hosea's shoes, and so the shoe pinches 
with delightful democracy. 

These things, to use a phrase of Hosea himself, 
would make "Uncle Samwell laf." In these 
poems and prose essays, Lowell turns loose a 
perfect riot of Yankee humor in the interest of 
righteousness. In the one case against the Mex- 
ican War; in the other case in behalf of the Union 
cause; in both instances in behalf of human 
freedom and human rights. If God is for man 
as man (as who does not know he is ?) what sane 
man can doubt that Lowell's "Biglow Papers" 
were warring in behalf of God ? 

Thet air flag's a leetle rotten, 

Hope it aint your Sunday's best; — 

Fact! it takes a sight o' cotton 
To stuff out a soger's chest: 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 47 

Sence we farmers hev to pay fer 't, 
Ef you must wear humps like these, 

Sposin' you should try salt hay fer 't, 
It would du ez slick ez grease. 

'Twouldn't suit them Southun fellers, 

They're a dreffle graspin' set, 
We must oilers blow the bellers 

Wen they want their irons het ; 
Maybe it's all right ez preachin', 

But my narves it kind o' grates, 
Wen I see the overreachin' 

O' them nigger-drivin' States. 

Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, 

Haint they cut a thunderin' swarth 
(Helped by Yankee renegaders) 

Thru the vartu o' the North! 
We begin to think it's nater 

To take sarse an' not be riled ; — - 
Who'd expect to see a tater 

All on eend at bein' biled? 

Ez fer war, I call it murder, — 

There you hev it plain an' flat; 
I don't want to go no furder 

Than my Testyment fer that ; 
God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 

It's ez long ez it is broad, 
An' you've gut to git up airly 

Ef you want to take in God. 



No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut? Voted agin 

him? 
Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd 

skin him; 
I seem's though I see her, with wrath in each quill, 
Like a chancery lawyer, afilin' her bill, 
An' grindin' her talents ez sharp ez all nater, 
To pounce like a writ on the back o' the traitor. 
Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, 



48 Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 

But a crisis like this must with vigor be met; 
Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner bestains, 
Holl Fourth o' Julys seem to bile in my veins. 

"Here we stan' on the Constitution, by thunder! 

It's a fact o' wich ther's bushils o' proofs ; 
Fer how could we trample on 't so, I wonder, 
Ef 't worn't thet it's oilers under our hoofs? " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; 
' ' Human rights haint no more 
Right to come on this floor, 
No more'n the man in the moon, " sez he. 
"The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin', 
An' you've no idee how much bother it saves ; 
We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin', 
We're used to layin' the string on our slaves, " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
Sez Mister Foote, 
"I should like to shoot 
The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon! " sez he. 
"Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther's no doubt on, 

It's sutthin' thet's — wha' d' ye call it? — divine, — 
An' the slaves thet we oilers make the most out on 
Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line, " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
"Fer all thet," sez Mangum, 
" 'Twould be better to hang 'em 
An' so git red on 'em soon, " sez he. 
" The mass ough' to labor an' we lay on somes, 

Thet's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree; 

" It'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom, 

An' your fact'ry gals (soon ez we split) '11 make head, 
An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em, 
'111 go to work raisin' pr'miscoous Ned, " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
"Yes, the North," sez Colquitt, 
" If we Southeners all quit, 
Would go down like a busted balloon," sez he. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 49 

"Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky's brewin' 

In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine, 
All the wise aristoxy is tumblin' to ruin, 

An' the sankylots drorin' an' drinkin' their wine, " 
Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; — 
"Yes," sez Johnson, "in France 
They're beginnin' to dance 
Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he. 

" The South's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, 
Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest 

Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery 

Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest." 

I du believe in Freedom's cause, 

Ez fur away ez Payris is; 
I love to see her stick her claws 

In them infarnal Phayrisees ; 
It's wal enough agin a king 

To dror resolves an' triggers, — 
But libbaty's a kind o' thing 

Thet don't agree with niggers. 

I du believe the people want 

A tax on teas an' coffees, 
Thet nothin' aint extravygunt, — 

Purvidin' I'm in office; 
Fer I hev loved my country sence 

My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
An' Uncle Sam I reverence, 

Partic'larly his pockets. 

I du believe in any plan 

O' levyin' the taxes, 
Ez long ez, like a lumberman, 

I git jest wut I axes: 



50 Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 



I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, 

Because it kind o' rouses 
The folks to vote, — an' keeps us in 

Our quiet custom-houses. 

I du believe it's wise an' good 

To sen' out furrin missions, 
Thet is, on sartin understood 

An' orthydox conditions; — 
I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann., 

Nine thousan' more fer outfit, 
An' me to recommend a man 

The place 'ould jest about fit. 

I do believe in special ways 

O' prayin' an' convartin'; 
The bread comes back in many days, 

An' buttered, tu, fer sartin; 
I mean in preyin' till one busts 

On wut the party chooses, 
An' in convartin' public trusts 

To very privit uses. 

I du believe hard coin the stuff 

Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; 
The people's oilers soft enough 

To make hard money out on; 
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, 

An' gives a good-sized junk to all,- 
I don't care how hard money is, 

Ez long ez mine's paid punctooal. 

I du believe with all my soul 

In the gret Press's freedom, 
To pint the people to the goal 

An' in the traces lead 'em; 
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes 

At my fat contracts squintin', 
An' withered be the nose thet pokes 

Inter the gov'ment printin' ! 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 51 

I du believe thet I should give 

Wut's his'n unto Cassar, 
Fer it's by him I move an' live, 

Frum him my bread an' cheese air* 
I du believe thet all o' me 

Doth bear his superscription, — 
Will, conscience, honor, honesty, 

An' things o' thet description. 

I du believe in prayer an' praise 

To him thet hez the grantin' 
O' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays, 

But most of all in Cantin' ; 
This doth my cup with marcies fill, 

This lays all thought o' sin to rest, — 
I don't believe in princerple, 

But O, I du in interest. 

I du believe in bein' this 

Or thet, ez it may happen 
One way or t'other hendiest is 

To ketch the people nappin' ; 
It aint by princerples nor men 

My preudunt course is steadied, — 
I scent wich pays the best, an' then 

Go into it baldheaded. 

There's one thing I'm in doubt about; in order to be Pres- 

idunt, 
It's absolutely ne'ssary to be a Southern residunt; 
The Constitution settles thet, an' also thet a feller 
Must own a nigger o' some sort, jet black, or brown, or 

yeller. 
Now I haint no objections agin particklar climes, 
Nor agin ownin' anythin' (except the truth sometimes) , 
But, ez I haint no capital, up there among ye, maybe, 
You might raise funds enough fer me to buy a low-priced 

baby, 
An' then, to suit the No'thern folks, who feel obleeged to say 
They hate an' cuss the very thing they vote fer every day, 



52 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 



Say you're assured I go full butt fer Liberty's diffusion 
An' made the purchis on'y jest to spite the Institootion ; — 
But, golly! there's the currier's hoss upon the pavement 

pawin' ! 
I'll be more 'xplicit in my next. 
Yourn, 

BlRDOFREDUM SAWIN. 



We have now a tolerably fair chance of estimating how 
the balance sheet stands between our returned volunteer and 
glory. Supposing the entries to be set down on both sides 
of the account in fractional parts of one hundred, we shall 
arrive at something like the following result : 

B. Sawin, Esq., in account with (Blank) Glory. 
Cr. Dr. 

By loss of one leg 20 To one 675th three 

' ' do one arm 15 cheers in Faneuil 

" do four fingers 5 Hall 30 

" do one eye 10 " do. do. on occasion 

" the breaking of six of presentation of 

ribs 6 sword to Colonel 

" having served under Wright 25 

Colonel Cushing one " one suit of gray 
month 44 clothes (ingenious- 
ly unbecoming) . 15 
" musical entertain- 
ments (drum and 
fife six months) . . 5 
" one dinner after re- 
turn 1 

1 ' chance of pension . . 1 
" privilege of draw- 
ing longbow dur- 
ing rest of natural 
life 23 

100 100 

E. E. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 53 

Rev. Homer Wilbur to Uncle Samuel, Dr. 

To his share of work done in Mexico on partnership 

account, sundry jobs, as below: 
" killing, maiming, and wounding about 5,000 Mexi- 
cans $2 . 00 

" slaughtering one woman carrying water to 

wounded 10 

" extra work on two different Sabbaths (one bom- 
bardment and one assault) , whereby the Mexi- 
cans were prevented from defiling themselves 

with the idolatries of high mass 3-5° 

" throwing an especially fortunate and Protestant 
bombshell into the Cathedral at Vera Cruz, 
whereby several female Papists were slain at the 

altar 50 

" his proportion of cash paid for conquered territory 1.75 

" do. do. for conquering do 1 . 50 

" manuring do. with new superior compost called 

"American Citizen" 50 

" extending the area of freedom and Protestantism .01 
" glory 01 

$9.87 
For riotous humor, which, without exaggeration, 

makes a body think of chief humorist, John Fal- 

staff, read this: 

Dear Sir, — You wish to know my notions 

On sartin pints thet rile the land; 
There's nothin' thet my natur so shuns 

Ez bein' mum or underhand ; 
I'm a straight-spoken kind o' creetur 

Thet blurts right out wut's in his head, 
An' ef I've one pecooler feetur, 

It is a nose thet wunt be led. 

So, to begin at the beginnin' 

An' come direcly to the pint, 
I think the country's underpinnin' 

Is some consid'ble out o' jint; 



54 Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 

I aint agoin' to try your patience 
By tellin' who done this or thet, 

I don't make no insinooations, 
I jest let on I smell a rat. 

Thet is, I mean, it seems to me so, 

But, ef the public think I'm wrong, 
I wunt deny but wut I be so, — 

An', fact, it don't smell very strong; 
My mind's tu fair to lose its balance 

An' say wich party hez most sense ; 
There may be folks o' greater talence 

Thet can't set stiddier on the fence. 

I'm an eclectic ; ez to choosin' 

'Twixt this an' thet, I'm plaguy lawth; 
I leave a side thet looks like losin', 

But (wile there's doubt) I stick to both; 
I stan' upon the Constitution, 

Ez preudunt statesmun say, who've planned 
A way to git the most profusion 

O' chances ez to ware they'll stand. 

Ez fer the war, I go agin it, — 

I mean to say I kind o' du, — 
Thet is, I mean thet, bein' in it, 

The best way wuz to fight it thru; 
Not but wut abstract war is horrid, 

I sign to thet with all my heart, — 
But civlyzation doos git forrid 

Sometimes upon a powder-cart. 



I don't appruve o' givin' pledges ; 

You'd ough' to leave a feller free, 
An' not go knockin' out the wedges 

To ketch his ringers in the tree ; 
Pledges air awfle breachy cattle 

Thet preudunt farmers don't turn out, 
Ez long 'z the people git their rattle, 

Wut is there fer 'm to grout about? 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 55 

Ez to the slaves, there's no confusion 

In my idees consarnin' them, — 
I think they air an Institution, 

A sort of — yes, jest so, — ahem: 
Do I own any? Of my merit 

On thet pint you yourself may jedge. 
All is, I never drink no sperit, 

Nor I haint never signed no pledge. 

Ez to my princerples, I glory 

In hevin' nothin' o' the sort; 
I aint a Wig, I aint a Tory, 

I'm jest a candidate, in short. 



P. S. 

Ez we're a sort o' privateerin', 

O' course, you know, it's sheer an' sheer, 
An' there is sutthin' wuth your hearin' 

I'll mention in your privit ear; 
Ef you git me inside the White House, 

Your head with ile I'll kin' o' 'nint 
By gittin' you inside the Light-house 

Down to the eend o' Jaalam Pint. 

An' ez the North hez took to brustlin' 
At bein' scrouged frum off the roost, 

I'll tell ye wut'll save all tusslin' 
An' give our side a harnsome boost. 

All this for the rights of man. To make selec- 
tion is fairly impossible. These papers are like 
the sky. We want it all. Quaint humor which 
sees the point and makes us see it too; humor 
which has moral purpose, stout as pikemen, and 
drives that purpose into our hearts as though the 
push of the planet were behind it. Those doc- 



56 Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 

trines, ground-grown, heaven-grown, are the very 
marrow of the New England which had come from 
the days unafraid of any peril. These humors 
fight. They are scant men of peace. They laugh 
and rush on to get the chance to die. You feel 
the man behind the jest. You know how stout 
a lover of man is talking. If you drink with 
Hosea Biglow you will need drink the essence of 
democracy. Man is man when Hosea is shakin' 
hands. 

These quotations have been made from the 
First Series of "The Biglow Papers," and are 
rollicking and drastic by turns. I am inclined to 
think that the Second Series, as Lowell himself 
thought, is better than the First. They have 
more " natur " and as much fiery invective humor. 
They are audacious and contagious. 

I doubt if ever a more signal triumph for humor 
as remedial agent has been in evidence than these 
"Biglow Papers." They caught the ear and eye 
of the people, of the demos; and so caught the 
thought and heart of the people. They were 
words which sounded everywhere. They were 
found in workshops, and sung on the streets. 
They caught slavery under holds, and threw it. 
Not anything, either said or written, had the 
vogue as an opponent of that malignant evil, 
that these humor-soaked papers had. Anti- 



Lowell — His Gospel of Humor 57 

slavery was, in them, unapologetic. Slavery was 
put on the defensive, a thing slavery had never 
known. The proslavery strength had been that 
it had assumed that every foe to itself was an 
innovator, an iconoclast; that slavery had the 
right — the ground was hers, and the law was hers. 
Now, by a poet's trick of humor and of tears, 
slavery found its weakness and wickedness dis- 
closed. God and a man had made what was 
hostile to man and God appear so. So that as an 
evidence of the cyclopic power of humor as a 
moral instrument, Lowell stands well-nigh alone. 
It is as if Burns had turned his plow-field speech 
against existing evils. The language of the 
common people in Hosea Biglow for the first time 
became the knight-errant of the common man. 
Laughter became stouter than a sword arm and 
sharper than a sword blade. And once again 
wisdom was justified of her children. Yankee 
Hosea had his say, and helped with his laugh to 
laugh slavery into the whirlpool of blood from 
which was no issuance. 



LOWELL— HIS GOSPEL OF NATURE 
LOVE 

We are slowly and surely coming around to 
God's way of thinking. We are like Moses 
"slow of speech," and like the disciples "slow of 
heart." Is not that word of the Christ very 
pitiful ? "Slow of heart." That is so apt a 
characterization and so bitter a one. He who 
used it had no irony in his voice or thought. Had 
Socrates said it, the words would have cut deep as 
a knife. Christ's kindness took the hurt from the 
cut; but slow of heart we are. We feel the appo- 
siteness of this descriptive term. Slow to catch 
the accents of the Voice: slow to see what the 
Eyes are looking at and from; slow to get the hid 
meanings, and, what is sadly true, slow to get the 
meanings not hid at all. We are coming to see 
how beautiful God thinks nature is. This is at 
the heart of the modern passion for outdoors. 
God made it. God loves it. God thinks his 
own garden fair. 

This, I think, we shall conclude when the matter 
has been gone over with care, that nature love is 
now a deeper thing than it was long since. I do 
not here discuss the literary aspects of nature love, 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 59 

having gone over that beautiful ground in an 
article entitled "The Literature of Nature." But 
this I hold true, that we moderns have come to 
nature from God's side. Since Jesus pointed out 
the lilies and sparrows we have had our eyes riveted 
on them. He was a man of the outdoors. The 
mountain, the sky, the sea, the night, the field, the 
radiant sunset sky, the ripening wheat, the growing 
corn, the walking through fields nodding to the 
summer wind, the torrents swollen with the rain, 
the rush of wind and rain when storm was on, 
the vineyard with its purple clusters and its 
emerald lanceolate of leaves — these he loved and 
these he named. The mountain he climbed, the 
sea he sailed and walked on, the sand he thought- 
fully trod upon along the seashore, the gray morn- 
ing when the light widened toward day and he 
was walking on the strand and looking at the 
fisher boat — we see and love them. Do 
we not see that age on age, as we behold 
Jesus to be God, and worship him as such, 
the nature love of him will be communicative ? 
We cannot be quit of it. He loved the flowers 
and grainfields, the yellow wilderness, the rocks, 
the snowy mountain and mournful sea, the beauti- 
ful undulation of daylight on the hill, the valley 
cup, the pyramidal acclivity, the mountain cliff, 
the rising sun, the sweaty noon. What his hands 



60 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

have touched, that do we his followers love. This 
is the genesis, I think beyond dispute, of modern 
nature love. It is rooted in God and Christ. 
We feel all things his, and love them after his 
fashion— less, truly, but similar. 

If this view be just, then poetry of nature will 
be in the sphere of theology, and straitly religious. 
We feel God in things; we see him in things. Cer- 
tain it is that such as give us appetency for nature, 
and an honest look at nature, are generous helpers 
to the heart. For myself I gladly acknowledge 
that Ruskin, Emerson, Blackmore, Conrad, Ten- 
nyson, and all others who have given me glimpses 
of nature things, have given me glimpses of God. 
Nature is a beautiful road to God. Not that 
nature love will of necessity engender God love — 
not that — but to the heart that cares for God, 
nature will be a method of approach and inter- 
pretation of the Almighty. We might change 
the phrasing of "Thanatopsis," and express our 
fact better than Bryant has done: 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, God speaks 
A various language. 

This outdoor love is bound to increase. It is 
one way of getting a look at God's face; and to 
get a look at God's face is the rational goal of 
human desire. How beautiful it would have 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 6i 

been to have seen Christ look at the "lily of the 
field." The Poet saw its loveliness and felt quiet, 
even unspeakable joy in it. Not too busy was 
the Son of man to stop and enjoy these sun tints 
rooted in the ground. Who that has seen wild 
wine-red poppies growing amidst the ripening 
wheat can ever forget that audacious riot of colors ? 
I have seen this vision, with the sea for background; 
and who shall be equal to the telling of the beauty ? 

But poets render service to man and God when 
they take us by the hand down woodland paths, 
by prairie ways, by meandering streams, by sunset 
glades, by dawn-approaching mountains. They 
serve us on our religious side. ^Esthetics climb 
to ethics. The lesser expands to the larger. 

Lowell knew nature well and loved it much. 
His letters, as brought under book cover by 
Charles Eliot Norton, are bright with these 
delectations of his heart. He was meant for 
living in a tent, I think. He had been reared in 
the country suburbs of Boston town. He had 
acquired information first-hand from trees and 
birds and flowers. In his "Epistle to George 
William Curtis," he tells how he had learned 
weather signs and to know birds by their flight 
and trees by their shape or by leaf and bark, and 
how he loved such lore above book-knowledge, 
and how roads, lake, stream, hillside, field, wood, 



62 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

aster, golden-rod, and blue succory were to him 
a dear delight. The country was on him in the 
town. 

In the Second Series of "The Biglow Papers" 
are some pastorals which will without doubt be 
immortal. They see so much; they say so much: 
they are the country lad, all eyes, all ears, a-waiting 
for the Spring. He feels the sap in his veins. 
He is crowded by the very thought of the con- 
tiguity of people. He wants nothing nearer than 
the sky. He thinks the bobolink is gladness with 
wings. He hears and roisters in the clatter of 
the blackbirds. He sees Spring take a run and 
jump from Winter into June. When I start out 
with Hosea of a morning I can feel the Spring 
dew wet my feet. He loves to walk out after 
dark when chores are done. Hosea, your hand, 
lad. You and I will walk under the stars together. 

Read " Summer Storm " : 

Untremulous in the river clear, 
Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge; 

So still the air that I can hear 
The slender clarion of the unseen midge ; 

Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep, 
Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases, 
Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases, 

The huddling trample of a drove of sheep 
Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases 

In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep, 
A confused noise between two silences, 
Finding at last in dust precarious peace. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 63 

On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses 
Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming tide, 

Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes 
Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide 
Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side; 

But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, 

Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened spray; 

Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge, 
And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway. 

Or listen to "The Birch-Tree " quiver: 

Rippling through thy branches goes the sunshine, 
Among thy leaves that palpitate forever; 
Ovid in thee a pining Nymph had prisoned, 
The soul once of some tremulous inland river, 
Quivering to tell her woe, but, ah! dumb, dumb forever! 

While all the forest, witched with slumberous moonshine, 

Holds up its leaves in happy, happy silence, 

Waiting the dew, with breath and pulse suspended, — 

I hear afar thy whispering, gleamy islands, 

And track thee wakeful still amid the wide-hung silence. 

Upon the brink of some wood-nestled lakelet, 
Thy foliage, like the tresses of a Dryad, 
Dripping about thy slim white stem, whose shadow 
Slopes quivering down the water's dusky quiet, 
Thou shrink' st as on her bath's edge would some startled 
Naiad. 

Thou art the go-between of rustic lovers; 
Thy white bark has their secrets in its keeping; 
Reuben writes here the happy name of Patience, 
And thy lithe boughs hang murmuring and weeping 
Above her, as she steals the mystery from thy keeping. 

Thou art to me like my beloved maiden, 

So frankly coy, so full of trembly confidences; 

Thy shadow scarce seems shade, thy pattering leaflets 

Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses, 

And Nature gives me all her summer confidences. 



64 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

Whether my heart with hope or sorrow tremble, 
Thou sympathizest still ; wild and unquiet, 
I fling me down; thy ripple, like a river, 
Flows valleyward, where calmness is, and by it 
My heart is floated down into the land of quiet. 

" Under the Willows " is replete with nature 
love and loving expression of it. 

In "The Growth of the Legend" is this allusion 
to a pine to which all those in whose blood is the 
pine-tree passion will listen with delight: 

Yes, the pine is the mother of legends ; what food 

For their grim roots is left when the thousand-yeared wood — 

The dim-aisled cathedral, whose tall arches spring 

Light, sinewy, graceful, firm-set as the wing 

From Michael's white shoulder — is hewn and defaced 

By iconoclast axes in desperate waste, 

And its wrecks seek the ocean it prophesied long, 

Cassandra-like, crooning its mystical song? 

Then the legends go with them, — even yet on the sea 

A wild virtue is left in the touch of the tree, 

And the sailor's night-watches are thrilled to the core 

With the lineal offspring of Odin and Thor. 

Or who can fail to catch the moonlight's silver 
tranquillity and mystic beauty ever remote and ever 
near and always kin to things unspeakable in this 
picture titled "Midnight" ? — 

The moon shines white and silent 

On the mist, which, like a tide 
Of some enchanted ocean, 

O'er the wide marsh doth glide, 
Spreading its ghost-like billows 

Silently far and wide. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 65 

A vague and starry magic 

Makes all things mysteries, 
And lures the earth's dumb spirit 

Up to the longing skies, — 
I seem to hear dim whispers, 

And tremulous replies. 

The fireflies o'er the meadow 

In pulses come and go; 
The elm-trees' heavy shadow 

Weighs on the grass below; 
And faintly from the distance 

The dreaming cock doth crow. 

All things look strange and mystic, 

The very bushes swell 
And take wild shapes and motions, 

As if beneath a spell, — 
They seem not the same lilacs 

From childhood known so well. 

" Beaver Brook " is sweet: 

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 
And, minuting the long day's loss, 

The cedar's shadow, slow and still, 
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. 

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir, 

Only the little mill sends up 
Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems 
The road along the mill-pond's brink, 

From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, 
My footstep scares the shy chewink. 

Beneath a bony buttonwood 

The mill's red door lets forth the din; 

The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 
Flits past the square of dark within. 



66 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

No mountain torrent's strength is here; 

Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, 
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 

And gently waits the miller's will. 

Get "To the Dandelion" by heart: 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold, 
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth's ample round 
May match in wealth, — thou art more dear to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease ; 

'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
In the white lily's breezy tent, 
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, — 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 
Where, as the breezes pass, 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 67 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, — 
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 

Or whiten in the wind, — of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, — and of a sky above, 
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move . 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with 
thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers. 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 

Thou teachest me to deem 
More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 
On all these living pages of God's book. 

This expresses, poet-wise, the gospel of nature. 

And in "An Indian-Summer Reverie," which 
all said, and truly said, is as delicious a rendering 
of the romance of the Indian Summer as ever has 
been written; and could the Red Man appreciate 
the spirit of his hazy summer time he would be 
with joy elate to read such a poem as this. For 



68 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

in this poem " Memory wanders like gleaning 
Ruth." 

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar shadows 
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the plowman's call 
Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh-furrowed 
meadows; 
The single crow a single caw lets fall ; 

And all around me every bush and tree 
Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon will be, 
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence over all. 

The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, 
Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, 

And hints at her foregone gentilities 
With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves; 

The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, 

Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 
As one who proudlier to a falling fortune cleaves. 

He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, 
Who, mid some council of the sad-garbed whites, 

Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, 
With distant eye broods over other sights, 

Sees the hushed wood the city's flare replace, 

The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's trace, 
And roams the savage Past of his undwindled rights. 

The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for lost, 
And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and dry, 

After the first betrayal of the frost, 
Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; 

The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid gold, 

To the faint Summer, beggared now and old, 
Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her favoring eye. 

The ash her purple drops forgivingly 
And sadly, breaking not the general hush; 

The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, 
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 69 

All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, 
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. 

O'er yon low wall, which guards one unkempt zone, 
Where vines, and weeds, and scrub-oaks intertwine 

Safe from the plow, whose rough, discordant stone 
Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, 

The tangled blackberry, crossed and recrossed, weaves 

A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; 
Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black-alders shine. 

Pillaring with flame this crumbling boundary, 
Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the plowboy's foot, 

Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, 
Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, 

The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, 

Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 
In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak stands mute. 

Below, the Charles — a stripe of nether sky, 
Now hid by rounded apple-trees, between 

Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps bellying by, 
Now flickering golden through a woodland screen, 

Then spreading out, at his next turn beyond, 

A silver circle like an inland pond — 
Slips seaward silently through marshes purple and green. 

Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes share, 

From every season drawn, of shade and light, 
Who sees in them but levels brown and bare ; 

Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free 

On them its largess of variety, 
For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare. 

In Spring they lie one broad expanse of green, 
O'er which the light winds run with glimmering feet ; 

Here, yellower stripes track out the creek unseen, 
There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches meet; 



70 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

And purpler stains show where the blossoms crowd, 
As if the silent shadow of a cloud 
Hung there becalmed, with the next breath to fleet. 

All round, upon the river's slippery edge, 
Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, 

Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling sedge. 

Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow 
To outward sight, and through your marshes wind; 

Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, 
Your twin flows silent through my world of mind : 

Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's gray! 

Before my inner sight ye stretch away, 
And will forever, though these fleshly eyes grow blind. 

These words and moods beat dimly upon our 

senses 

Like the long surf upon the distant shore. 

He avers: 

A buttercup 
Could hold me for a day's delight. 

A bird could lift my fancy up 
To ether free from cloud or blight. 

Note how he sees 

The toothless sea mumbling. 

And "Pictures from Appledore" contains some 
of the most vivid portraiture of sea cliff and sea 
sky and sea wave we shall find in reading all the 
poets' books: 

How looks Appledore in a storm? 

I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic, 
Butting against the maddened Atlantic, 

When surge after surge would heap enorme, 
Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, 
That lifted and lifted and then let go 



Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 71 

A great white avalanche of thunder, 

A grinding, blinding, deafening ire 
Monadnock might have trembled under; 

And the island, whose rock- roots pierce below 

To where they are warmed with the central fire, 
You could feel its granite fibers racked, 

As it seemed to plunge with a shudder and thrill 

Right at the breast of the swooping hill, 
And to rise again, snorting a cataract 
Of rage-froth from every cranny and ledge, 

While the sea drew its breath in hoarse and deep, 
And the next vast breaker curled its edge, 

Gathering itself for a mighty leap. 

North, east, and south there are reefs and breakers, 

You would never dream of in smooth weathe. , 
That toss and gore the sea for acres, 

Bellowing and gnashing and snarling together; 
Look northward, where Duck Island lies, 
And over its crown you will see arise, 
Against a background of slaty skies, 

A row of pillars still and white 

That glimmer and then are out of sight, 
As if the moon should suddenly kiss, 

While you crossed the gusty desert by night, 
The long colonnades of Persepolis, 
And then as sudden a darkness should follow 
To gulp the whole scene at single swallow, 
The city's ghost, the drear, brown waste, 
And the string of camels, clumsy-paced: — 
Look southward for White Island light, 

The lantern stands ninety feet o'er the tide; 
There is first a half-mile of tumult and fight, 
Of dash and roar and tumble and fright, 

And surging bewilderment wild and wide, 
Where the breakers struggle left and right, 

Then a mile or more of rushing sea, 
And then the lighthouse slim and lone; 
And whenever the whole weight of ocean is thrown 



72 Lowell — His Gospel of Nature Love 

Full and fair on White Island head, 

A great mist-jotun you will see 

Lifting himself up silently 
High and huge o'er the lighthouse top, 
With hands of wavering spray outspread, 

Groping after the little tower, 

That seems to shrink and shorten and cower, 
Till the monster's arms of a sudden drop, 

And silently and fruitlessly 

He sinks again into the sea. 

Or read this sea similitude: 

And the lost fragments of the storm 

Like the shattered wrecking from a fight at sea. 

In "The Discovery" is a description which 
makes you see the honey gold of a moorland tor- 
rent as you have yourself ofttimes beheld it among 
New England hills. 

And "The Maple/' see how she bedecks herself. 

Or feel the mood caught in "The Recall." 

Enough has been cited to quite justify the 
claim of James Russell Lowell to be one of God's 
nature interpreters; and reading after him we shall 
learn the holy gift of seeing, and may chance in 
time the holy gift of saying. 

We shall hug up to God a little who hug up to 
Lowell, nature-poet, much. 



LOWELL— HIS PASSION FOR MAN 

Some one has noted that the last expression of 
Lowell as essayist is bound up in that volume 
(mostly addresses, and very noble ones they are, 
and make all Americans proud of him, delivered 
mainly while he was our ambassador at St. James) 
which was by Lowell entitled " Democracy." He 
was not backslider from our simple life and home- 
lier, because he was in later years so much the dev- 
otee of England, land and friend. He was at heart, 
and lifelong, a democrat. He had fast faith in 
man because he was man. He saw how God set 
store by man, and inferred therefrom the value of 
each apart from circumstance. To the tracing 
of this bias of his heart and intelligence I wish to 
devote a little space. 

This is a Christian thought. We shall agree 
in this, I take it. At least, I hope we may. God 
made man and God redeemed man; and therein 
God magnified man. Here is the impregnable 
fortress of democracy. Aside from this, man 
has not made his stand and cannot. Here he is 
safe. 

A race of nobles may die out, 
A royal line may leave no heir; 

Wise Nature sets no guards about 
Her pewter plate and wooden ware. 
73 



74 Lowell — His Passion for Man 

But they fail not, the kinglier breed, 

Who starry diadems attain; 
To dungeon, ax, and stake succeed 

Heirs of the old heroic strain. 

For the fine gift of seeing man, and loving him 
when seen, we shall go far to find a readier state- 
ment and manlier than in "Agassiz." 

In "Freedom" read: 

Freedom is recreated year by year, 

In hearts wide open on the Godward side, 

In souls calm-cadenced as the whirling sphere, 
In minds that sway the future like a tide. 

No broadest creeds can hold her, and no codes; 

She chooses men for her august abodes, 

Building them fair and fronting to the dawn. 

And had the genius to be men 

is how Lowell puts it, and 'tis a great putting. I 
love that line. 

In "Ode to France": 

Slow are the steps of Freedom, but her feet 

Turn never backward : hers no bloody glare ; 
Her light is calm, and innocent, and sweet, 

And where it enters there is no despair: 
Not first on palace and cathedral spire 
Quivers and gleams that unconsuming fire ; 

While these stand black against her morning skies, 
The peasant sees it leap from peak to peak 

Along his hills; the craftsman's burning eyes 
Own with cool tears its influence mother-meek; 

It lights the poet's heart up like a star. 

Man is, like Dante, 

Himself unshaken as the sky. 



Lowell — His Passion for Man 75 

The strength of man is in his sense of himself. 
In " Prometheus" it is writ: 

I am still Prometheus. 
Man is more than Constitutions 

is a thunder peal for men. In "On the Capture 
of Certain Fugitive Slaves near Washington," 
Lowell lays down the law of the larger fealty of 
man to man: 

We owe allegiance to the State; but deeper, truer, more, 

To the sympathies that God hath set within our spirit's 

core ; — 
Our country claims our fealty; we grant it so, but then 
Before Man made us citizens, great Nature made us men. 

He's true to God who's true to man ; wherever wrong is done 
To the humblest and the weakest, 'neath the all-beholding 

sun, 
That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most base, 
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all their 

race. 

God works for all. . . . 

Or in another poem, "An Incident in a Railroad 
Car": 

There is no wind but soweth seeds 
Of a more true and open life, 
Which burst, unlooked-for, into high-souled deeds, 
With wayside beauty rife. 

We find within these souls of ours 
Some wild germs of a higher birth, 
Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers 
Whose fragrance fills the earth. 



76 Lowell — His Passion for Man 

Within the hearts of all men lie 
These promises of wider bliss, 
Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, 
In sunny hours like this. 



All that hath been majestical 
In life or death, since time began, 
Is native in the simple heart of all, 
The angel heart of man. 

And thus, among the untaught poor, 
Great deeds and feelings find a home, 
That cast in shadow all the golden lore 
Of classic Greece and Rome. 

O, mighty brother-soul of man, 
Where'er thou art, in low or high, 
Thy skyey arches with exulting span 
O'er-roof infinity! 

All thoughts that mold the age begin 
Deep down within the primitive soul, 
And from the many slowly upward win 
To one who grasps the whole : 

In his wide brain the feeling deep 
That struggled on the many's tongue 
Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap 
O'er the weak thrones of wrong. 

The value of the soul and " That vast pity which 
almost makes men die" is described in " The 
Forlorn.' ' 

Man-soul is not so great with Lowell as with 
Bunyan, yet it is justly great. "Sub Pondere" 
knows that — 



Lowell — His Passion for Man yy 

The hope of Truth grows stronger, day by day; 

I hear the soul of Man around me waking, 

Like a great sea, its frozen fetters breaking, 
And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, 
Tossing huge continents in scornful play, 

And crushing them, with din of grinding thunder, 

That makes old emptinesses stare in wonder; 
The memory of a glory passed away 
Lingers in every heart, as, in the shell, 

Resounds the bygone freedom of the sea, 
And every hour new signs of promise tell 

That the great soul shall once again be free, 
For high, and yet more high, the murmurs swell 

Of inward strife for truth and liberty. 

In another sonnet he says : 

Great Truths are portions of the soul of man ; 

Great souls are portions of Eternity; 
Each drop of blood that e'er through true heart ran 

With lofty message, ran for thee and me; 
For God's law, since the starry song began, 

Hath been, and still for evermore must be, 
That every deed which shall outlast Time's span 

Must goad the soul to be erect and free; 
Slave is no word of deathless lineage sprung, — 

Too many noble souls have thought and died, 
Too many mighty poets lived and sung, 

And our good Saxon, from lips purified 
With martyr-fire, throughout the world hath rung 

Too long to have God's holy cause denied. 

And in one of those upleaps of speech and percep- 
tion Lowell shouts like a trumpeter at a triumph : 

We Sinais climb and know it not. 

''The Present Crisis" has not many equals as a 
proclamation of the dignity of the soul : 



7§ 



Lowell — His Passion for Man 



When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's 

aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to 

west, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him 

climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of 

Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous 

throe, 
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and 

fro; 
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start, 
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, 
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the 

Future's heart. 

"Columbus," a noble poem, feels: 

The old world is effete ; there man with man 
Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, 
Life is trod under foot, — Life, the one block 
Of marble that's vouchsafed wherefrom to carve 
Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to shine down 
The future, Life, the irredeemable block, 
Which one o'erhasty chisel-dint oft mars, 
Scanting our room to cut the features out 
Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown 
With a mean head the perfect limbs, or leave 
The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, 
Failure's brief epitaph. 

Yes, Europe's world 
Reels on to judgment; there the common need, 
Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 
'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowlingly 
O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, 
Knit strongly with eternal fibers up 
Of all men's separate and united weals, 



Lowell — His Passion for Man 79 

Self -poised and sole as stars, yet one as light, 

Holds up a shape of large Humanity 

To which by natural instinct every man 

Pays loyalty exulting, by which all 

Mold their own lives, and feel their pulses filled 

With the red fiery blood of the general life, 

Making them mighty in peace, as now in war 

They are, even in the flush of victory, weak, 

Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. 

Man must come on his way. The Old World 
must have its door open out to let man come to 
his own. Manhood must win and rule. In "A 
Glance Behind the Curtain," we are told: 

No man is born into the world, whose work 
Is not born with him; there is always work, 
And tools to work withal, for those who will; 
And blessed are the horny hands of toil! 

So man as man, not ashamed of himself nor of 
his toil, we love, as the poet loves him, at his work; 
for the blessing stays upon those hands that toil. 

Yet not to go farther but to take a look at such 
a man as died at his work — hero work of giving 
chance to all men to be workers and to be men — 
to take a full-face look at Lincoln in the " Com- 
memoration Ode," which is of man and for 
man. Its sovereign worth, however, will always 
remain, I think, the poet's perception of the 
bulk of Lincoln and his portrait drawn of him 
there when scarce the blood was dry upon his 
hateful wounds and before the tears which wet the 



8o Lowell — His Passion for Man 

cheeks of all the best of women and men were 
diminished by a single tear. Of this ode we must 
in reason say that nothing so poised, so strong, so 
farseeing, so apt, so democratic, so music-drenched 
has been written of this martyr son of America as 
this. I love to come slowly by and let this vision 
of a man this poet drew, slowly cast its shadow on 
my life. It is as if a prairie had climbed high into 
a mountain. In him is both breadth and height. 
The "Commemoration Ode" will to all the years 
that lift sunrise on this dear land of ours be the 
proof beyond a hesitation of Lowell's passion for 
man. 



LOWELL—HIS GOSPEL OF ASPIRATION 
AND RESOLVE 

"I will arise and go to my father" is passed 
into the select company of immortal phrases since 
Jesus gave it place in the incomparable parable. 
The prodigal began his new sane life with that 
phrase on his lips and in his will. Since men 
have been prodigals, which is now a long while, 
the prologue to the return has been the high 
resolve. The lonely, homesick, starving lad, lean, 
lank, bedraggled, tattered as a winter oak, through 
his bloodshot eyes saw his home, and wanted it, 
saw his home, and aspired toward it, and then 
resolved for it. And his words — we hear them 
now and we shall hear them ever. 

They are trumpet words. They are preamble to 
a saved life. The lost life is drifting into the 
past tense when a man hungers and resolves. 
There is, therefore, a holy gospel in aspiration 
and resolution. 

Such as help us to aspire do greatly help us. 

Such as help us to resolve do still more greatly help 

us. When we fall in company of such as make us 

see, however faintly, the better — see it as a dim line 

of mountains, very far and pathetically uncertain, 

81 



82 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

and yet see so as to kindle the thought of mountains 
— by that company are we qualified as if angels 
had companied with us. The poetry of inspi- 
ration is very blessed poetry. I recall through 
years those voices — prose passages and poems — 
which swam across my life like a summer cloud 
across a burnt and weary plain. Bernard of 
Cluny's "Jerusalem the Golden" was such. 
Thomas Olivers's "The God of Abrah'm Praise" 
was such. Read this from Bernard, and try your 
heart upon it, and see if it spreads wing,and know, 
if it does not, the heart is needing of repair: 

Brief life is here our portion ; 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care; 
The life that knows no ending, 

The tearless life, is there. 
O happy retribution! 

Short toil, eternal rest; 
For mortals and for sinners 

A mansion with the blest! 

And now we fight the battle, 

But then shall wear the crown 
Of full and everlasting 

And passionless renown: 
But He whom now we trust in 

Shall then be seen and known; 
And they that know and see him 

Shall have him for their own. 

The morning shall awaken, 

The shadows shall decay, 
And each true-hearted servant 

Shall shine as doth the day. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 83 

There God, our King and Portion, 

In fullness of his grace, 
Shall we behold forever, 

And worship face to face. 

O sweet and blessed country, 

The home of God's elect! 
O sweet and blessed country 

That eager hearts expect! 
Jesus, in mercy bring us 

To that dear land of rest; 
Who art, with God the Father, 

And Spirit, ever blest. 

For thee, O dear, dear country, 

Mine eyes their vigils keep; 
For very love, beholding 

Thy happy name, they weep. 
The mention of thy glory 

Is unction to the breast, 
And medicine in sickness, 

And love, and life, and rest. 

O one, O only mansion, 

O paradise of joy! 
Where tears are ever banished, 

And smiles have no alloy; 
The Lamb is all thy splendor, 

The Crucified thy praise ; 
His laud and benediction 

Thy ransomed people raise. 

With jasper glow thy bulwarks, 

Thy streets with emerald blaze ; 
The sardius and the topaz 

Unite in thee their rays ; 
Thine ageless walls are bonded 

With amethyst unpriced ; 
Thy saints build up its fabric, 

And the corner-stone is Christ. 



84 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

Thou hast no shore, fair ocean; 

Thou hast no time, bright day: 
Dear fountain of refreshment 

To pilgrims far away: 
Upon the Rock of ages 

They raise thy holy tower; 
Thine is the victor's laurel, 

And thine the golden dower. 

Jerusalem the golden, 

With milk and honey blest, 
Beneath thy contemplation 

Sink heart and voice oppressed: 
I know not, O I know not 

What social joys are there; 
What radiancy of glory, 

What light beyond compare. 

They stand, those halls of Zion, 

All jubilant with song, 
And bright with many an angel, 

And all the martyr throng: 
The Prince is ever in them, 

The daylight is serene; 
The pastures of the blessed 

Are decked in glorious sheen. 

There is the throne of David; 

And there, from care released, 
The song of them that triumph, 

The shout of them that feast; 
And they who, with their Leader, 

Have conquered in the fight, 
Forever and forever 

Are clad in robes of white. 

O sweet and blessed country, 
The home of God's elect! 

O sweet and blessed country 
That eager hearts expect! 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 85 

Jesus, in mercy bring us 

To that dear land of rest; 
Who art, with God the Father, 

And Spirit, ever blest. 

I think "The God of Abrah'm Praise" among 
the eagle wings to wear upon the soul. If any- 
body were to say, "It is an ode than which Pindar, 
nor Collins, nor Keats, nor Lowell, has written a 
nobler," he could not be severely criticised by any 
who had blood in their brain. And if anybody 
were to say it was the noblest ode in the English 
speech, wise people could do nothing more drastic 
than demur. They could not find it in their hearts 
to be vitriolic. Read it now and answer for your- 
self: 

The God of Abrah'm praise, 

Who reigns enthroned above 
Ancient of everlasting days, 

And God of love : 
Jehovah, great I AM, 

By earth and heaven confessed; 
I bow and bless the sacred name, 

Forever blest. 

The God of Abrah'm praise, 

At whose supreme command 
From earth I rise, and seek the joys 

At his right hand : 
I all on earth forsake, 

Its wisdom, fame, and power; 
And him my only portion make, 

My shield and tower. 

The God of Abrah'm praise, 
Whose all-sufficient grace 



86 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

Shall guide me all my happy days 

In all his ways ; 
He calls a worm his friend, 

He calls himself my God! 
And he shall save me to the end, 

Through Jesus' blood. 

He by himself hath sworn, 

I on his oath depend ; 
I shall, on eagle wings upborne, 

To heaven ascend: 
I shall behold his face, 

I shall his power adore, 
And sing the wonders of his grace 

For evermore. 

Though nature's strength decay, 

And earth and hell withstand, 
To Canaan's bounds I urge my way, 

At his command; 
The watery deep I pass, 

With Jesus in my view; 
And through the howling wilderness 

My way pursue. 

The goodly land I see, 

With peace and plenty blest ; 
A land of sacred liberty, 

And endless rest. 
There milk and honey flow, 

And oil and wine abound; 
And trees of life forever grow, 

With mercy crowned. 
There dwells the Lord our King, 

The Lord our Righteousness, 
Triumphant o'er the world and sin, 

The Prince of peace; 
On Zion's sacred height, 

His kingdom still maintains; 
And, glorious, with his saints in light 

Forever reigns. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration $7 

He keeps his own secure; 

He guards them by his side ; 
Arrays in garments white and pure 

His spotless bride; 
With streams of sacred bliss, 

With groves of living joys, 
With all the fruits of paradise, 

He still supplies. 

Before the great Three One 

They all exulting stand, 
And tell the wonders he hath done 

Through all their land: 
The listening spheres attend, 

And swell the growing fame ; 
And sing, in songs which never end, 

The wondrous name. 

The God who reigns on high 

The great archangels sing, 
And, "Holy, holy, holy," cry, 

"Almighty King! 
Who was and is the same, 

And evermore shall be; 
Jehovah, Father, great I AM, 

We worship thee." 

Before the Saviour's face 

The ransomed nations bow; 
O'erwhelmed at his almighty grace, 

Forever new : 
He shows his prints of love, — 

They kindle to a flame, 
And sound through all the worlds above, 

The slaughtered Lamb! 

The whole triumphant host 

Give thanks to God on high ; 
"Hail, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," 

They ever cry: 



88 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

Hail, Abrah'm's God, and mine! — 

I join the heavenly lays, — 
All might and majesty are thine, 

And endless praise. 

And I recall with a lunging pulse even now 
what a thrill of heart I felt when on a summer 
evening, with a summer sunset drawing on and 
summer odors drugging my senses, and the whole- 
some summer sky owning my heart, I saw the 
cross held up and the eternal daylight dawn when 
I read, for the first, Henry Lyte's 

Hold Thou thy cross before my closing eyes ; 
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies ; 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows 

flee; 
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me! 

The first foot on the first hill-slant that slants 
toward the mountain top, is epochal. We must 
aspire lest we die and be buried along the dusty 
level plain. Try your life on Browning's very 
noble poem of aspiration, "A Grammarian's 
Funeral": 

Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 

Singing together. 
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes, 

Each in its tether 
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 

Cared for till cock-crow: 
Look out if yonder be not day again 

Rimming the rock-row! 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 8q 

That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, 

Rarer, intenser, 
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, 

Chafes in the censer. 
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop ; 

Seek we sepulture 
On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 

Crowded with culture! 
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; 

Clouds overcome it; 
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 

Circling its summit. 
Thither our path lies ; wind we up the heights ; 

Wait ye the warning? 
Our low life was the level's and the night's : 

He's for the morning. 
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 

'Ware the beholders! 
This is our master, famous, calm and dead, 

Borne on our shoulders. 




That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it : 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit: 
This high man, aiming at a million, 

Misses an unit. 
That, has the world here — should he need the next, 

Let the world mind him! 
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 

Seeking shall find him. 



Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: 

Hail to your purlieus, 
All ye highfliers of the feathered race, 

Swallows and curlews! 



90 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

Here's the top-peak; the multitude below 

Live, for they can, there: 
This man decided not to Live but Know — 

Bury this man there? 
Here — here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds 
form, 

Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm, 

Peace let the dew send ! 
Lofty designs must close in like effects : 

Loftily lying, 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying. 

Hear those drums a-beating, and lift eyes and 
face toward the morning mountain crest! 

This is a "glorious gospel," if I may borrow 
Paul's delighted phrase for anything other than 
that to which he applied it. I will, but with sub- 
tractions. There is no gospel " glorious " like his, 
and ours, the same as his, "The glorious gospel 
of the blessed God." Yet is the gospel of uplook 
and uplift rightly glorious. 

Lowell is of those who are anointed to look up. 
His were hungry eyes. Had you fallen in with 
him along a country way you would have found 
him looking more up than down though he saw 
both down and up. We always see the down true 
and clear but give scant heed to the upper. Such 
as aspire make us aspire. Poets sing of what they 
dream of. The hungry heart provokes a hungry 
voice. Aspirings are not lip-born : they are soul- 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 91 

born. Bayard Taylor brings word of "ear-born 
music"; but aspiration is not this. Aspiration is 
soul-born music. 

Lowell's "Longing" says this in a fashion: 

Still, through our paltry stir and strife, 

Glows down the wished Ideal, 
And Longing molds in clay what Life 

Carves in the marble Real ; 
To let the new life in, we know, 

Desire must ope the portal ; — 
Perhaps the longing to be so 

Helps make the soul immortal. 

Longing is God's fresh heavenward will 

With our poor earthward striving; 
We quench it that we may be still 

Content with merely living; 
But, would we learn that heart's full scope 

Which we are hourly wronging, 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope 

And realize our longing. 

Ah! let us hope that to our praise 

Good God not only reckons 
The moments when we tread his ways, 

But when the spirit beckons, — 
That some slight good is also wrought 

Beyond self-satisfaction, 
When we are simply good in thought, 

Howe'er we fail in action. 

This, to be sure, is not the highest grade of aspi- 
ration, nor interpretation of it, but hints the theme, 
and tries its lower keys. 



92 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 
"The Moon " is better longing: 

My soul was like the sea, 

Before the moon was made, 
Moaning in vague immensity, 

Of its own strength afraid, 

Unrestful and unstaid. 
Through every rift it foamed in vain, 

About its earthly prison, 
Seeking some unknown thing in pain, 
And sinking restless back again, 

For yet no moon had risen ; 
Its only voice a vast dumb moan, 

Of utterless anguish speaking, 
It lay unhopefully alone, 

And lived but in an aimless seeking. 
So was my soul. 

The note of aspiration, the unconscious tide 

rush of soul, is pictured in a fragment entitled 

"Remembered Music," which is instinct with 

the loneliness and vagueness and vastness of the 

homeless heart: 

Thick-rushing, like an ocean vast 

Of bisons the far prairie shaking, 
The notes crowd heavily and fast 
As surfs, one plunging while the last 

Draws seaward from its foamy breaking. 
Or in low murmurs they began, 

Rising and rising momently, 
As o'er a harp ^Eolian 
A fitful breeze, until they ran 

Up to a sudden ecstasy. 
And then, like minute drops of rain 

Ringing in water silverly, 
They lingering dropped and dropped again, 
Till it was almost like a pain 

To listen when the next would be. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 93 

But "The Pioneer" sings this song in a much 
better fashion. This speaks the robust aspiring 
of an unfetterable soul: 

What man would live coffined with brick and stone, 
Imprisoned from the influences of air, 
And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere, 
When all before him stretches, furrowless and lone, 

The unmapped prairie none can fence or own? 

What man would read and read the selfsame faces, 
And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds, 
Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds, 
This year retracing last year's, every year's, dull traces, 

When there are woods and un-man-stifled places? 

What man o'er one old thought would pore and pore, 
Shut like a book between its covers thin 
For every fool to leave his dog's-ears in, 
When solitude is his, and God for evermore, 
Just for the opening of a paltry door? 

What man would watch life's oozy element 
Creep Letheward forever, when he might 
Down some great river drift beyond men's sight, 
To where the undethroned forest's royal tent 
Broods with its hush o'er half a continent? 

What man with men would push and altercate, 
Piecing out crooked means for crooked ends, 
When he can have the skies and woods for friends, 
Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate, 

And in himself be ruler, church, and state? 

Cast leaves and feathers rot in last year's nest, 

The winged brood, flown thence, new dwellings plan ; 
The serf of his own Past is not a man ; 
To change and change is life, to move and never rest; — 

Not what we are, but what we hope, is best. 



94 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

The wild, free woods make no man halt or blind; 
Cities rob men of eyes and hands and feet, 
Patching one whole of many incomplete ; 
The general preys upon the individual mind, 
And each alone is helpless as the wind. 

Each man is some man's servant; every soul 
Is by some other's presence quite discrowned; 
Each owes the next through all the imperfect round, 
Yet not with mutual help ; each man is his own goal, 
And the whole earth must stop to pay his toll. 

Here, life the undiminished man demands; 
New faculties stretch out to meet new wants ; 
What Nature asks, that Nature also grants; 
Here man is lord, not drudge, of eyes and feet and 
hands, 
And to his life is knit with hourly bands. 

Resolution sad and stern is writ in " On a Portrait 
of Dante by Giotto" : 

Can this be thou who, lean and pale, 

With such immitigable eye 
Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale, 

And note each vengeance, and pass by 
Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance 
Cast backward one forbidden glance, 

And saw Francesca, with child's glee, 

Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee 
And with proud hands control its fiery prance? 

With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow f 

And eye remote, that inly sees 
Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now 

In some sea-lulled Flesperides, 
Thou movest through the jarring street, 
Secluded from the noise of feet 

By her gift-blossom in thy hand, 

Thy branch of palm from Holy Land ; — 
No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 95 

Yet there is something round thy lips 
That prophesies the coming doom, 

The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse 
Notches the perfect disk with gloom; 

A something that would banish thee, 

And thine untamed pursuer be, 

From men and their unworthy fates, 
Though Florence had not shut her gates, 

And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free. 

"Above and Below" is call to see and do, 
which all men do well to hear. Let us hear it: 

1 

O dwellers in the valley-land, 

Who in deep twilight grope and cower, 
Till the slow mountain's dial-hand 

Shortens to noon's triumphal hour, — 
While ye sit idle, do ye think 

The Lord's great work sits idle too ? 
That light dare not o'erleap the brink 

Of morn, because 'tis dark with you? 

Though yet your valleys skulk in night, 

In God's ripe fields the day is cried, 
And reapers, with their sickles bright, 

Troop, singing, down the mountain-side. 
Come up, and feel what health there is 

In the frank Dawn's delighted eyes, 
As, bending with a pitying kiss, 

The night-shed tears of Earth she dries! 

The Lord wants reapers: O, mount up, 

Before night comes, and says, — "Too late!" 
Stay not for taking scrip or cup, 

The Master hungers while ye wait; 
'Tis from these heights alone your eyes 

The advancing spears of day can see, 
Which o'er the eastern hilltops rise, 

To break your long captivity. 



96 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

11 

Lone watcher on the mountain-height! 

It is right precious to behold 
The first long surf of climbing light 

Flood all the thirsty east with gold; 
But we, who in the shadow sit, 

Know also when the day is nigh, 
Seeing thy shining forehead lit 

With his inspiring prophecy. 

Thou hast thine office ; we have ours ; 

God lacks not early service here, 
But what are thine eleventh hours 

He counts with us for morning cheer; 
Our day, for Him, is long enough, 

And when he giveth work to do, 
The bruised reed is amply tough 

To pierce the shield of error through. 

But not the less do thou aspire 

Light's earlier messages to preach; 
Keep back no syllable of fire, — 

Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. 
Yet God deems not thine aeried sight 

More worthy than our twilight dim, — 
For meek Obedience, too, is Light, 

And following that is finding Him. 

The negative of right and dominant resolve is 
set to music in "Rhoecus," which, besides its moral 
inculcation, is so daintily done a bit of Greek 
mythology as to make its insertion half a duty. 
But the limits will not allow all this melody to 
have way here, but enough must sing to give the 
lesson sway: 

A youth named Rhcecus, wandering in the wood, 
Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 97 

He propped its gray trunk with admiring care, 

And with a thoughtless footstep loitered on. 

But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 

That murmured "Rhcecus!" 'Twas as if the leaves, 

Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured it, 

And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 

It murmured "Rhcecus! " softer than a breeze. 

He started and beheld with dizzy eyes 

What seemed the substance of a happy dream 

Stand there before him, spreading a warm glow 

Within the green glooms of the shadowy oak. 

It seemed a woman's shape, yet all too fair 

To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 

For any that were wont to mate with gods. 

All naked like a goddess stood she there, 

And like a goddess all too beautiful 

To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 

"Rhcecus, I am the Dryad of this tree," 

Thus she began, dropping her low-toned words 

Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of dew, 

"And with it I am doomed to live and die; 

The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 

Nor have I other bliss than simple life; 

Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can give, 

And with a thankful joy it shall be thine. " 

Then Rhcecus, with a flutter at the heart, 
Yet, by the prompting of such beauty, bold, 
Answered : ' ' What is there that can satisfy 
The endless craving of the soul but love? 
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
Which must be evermore my spirit's goal." 
After a little pause she said again, 
But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
" I give it, Rhcecus, though a perilous gift; 
An hotir before the sunset meet me here. " 
And straightway there was nothing he could see 
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy oak, 
And not a sound came to his straining ears 



98 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, 
And far away upon an emerald slope 
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 

Now, in those days of simpleness and faith, 
Men did not think that happy things were dreams 
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn 
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 
To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 
So Rhcecus made no doubt that he was blest, 
And all along unto the city's gate 
Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he walked, 
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its wont, 
And he could scarce believe he had not wings, 
Such sunshine seemed to glitter through his veins 
Instead of blood, so light he felt and strange. 

Young Rhcecus had a faithful heart enough, 
But one that in the present dwelt too much, 
And, taking with blithe welcome whatsoe'er 
Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in that, 
Like the contented peasant of a vale, 
Deemed it the world, and never looked beyond. 
So, haply meeting in the afternoon 
Some comrades who were playing at the dice, 
He joined them, and forgot all else beside. 

The dice were rattling at the merriest, 
And Rhcecus, who had met but sorry luck, 
Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 
When through the room there hummed a yellow bee 
That buzzed about his ear with down-dropped legs 
As if to light. And Rhcecus laughed and said, 
Feeling how red and flushed he was with loss, 
"By Venus! does he take me for a rose?" 
And brushed him off with rough, impatient hand. 
But still the bee came back, and thrice again 
Rhcecus did beat him off with growing wrath. 
Then through the window new the wounded bee, 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 99 

And Rhoscus, tracking him with angry eyes, 

Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly 

Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 

And instantly the blood sank from his heart, 

As if its very walls had caved away. 

Without a word he turned, and, rushing forth, 

Ran madly through the city and the gate, 

And o'er the plain, which now the wood's long shade, 

By the low sun thrown forward broad and dim, 

Darkened well-nigh unto the city's wall. 

Quite spent and out of breath he reached the tree, 
And, listening fearfully, he heard once more 
The low voice murmur "Rhcecus!" close at hand: 
Whereat he looked around him, but could see 
Naught but the deepening glooms beneath the oak. 
Then sighed the voice, "Oh, Rhcecus! nevermore 
Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 
Me, who would fain have blessed thee with a love 
More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 
Filled up with nectar any mortal heart: 
But thou didst scorn my humble messenger, 
And sent' st him back to me with bruised wings. 
We spirits only show to gentle eyes, 
We ever ask an undivided love, 
And he who scorns the least of Nature's works 
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
Farewell! for thou canst never see me more. " 

Then Rhcecus beat his breast, and groaned aloud, 
And cried, "Be pitiful! forgive me yet 
This once, and I shall never need it more! " 
"Alas! " the voice returned, " 'tis thou art blind, 
Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, 
But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; 
Only the soul hath power o'er itself." 
With that again there murmured "Nevermore ! " 
And Rhcecus after heard no other sound, 
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp leaves, 
Like the long surf upon a distant shore, 



ioo Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 

The night had gathered round him: o'er the plain 

The city sparkled with its thousand lights, 

And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 

Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, 

With all its bright sublimity of stars, 

Deepened, and on his forehead smote the breeze; 

Beauty was all around him and delight, 

But from that eve he was alone on earth. 

"The Oak" is gnarled with resolution: 

What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, is his! 

There needs no crown to mark the forest's king; 
How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss! 

Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring, 
Which he with such benignant royalty 

Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; 
All nature seems his vassal proud to be, 

And cunning only for his ornament. 

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, 

An unquelled exile from the summer's throne, 
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly shows, 

Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are flown. 
His boughs make music of the winter air, 

Jeweled with sleet, like some cathedral front 
Where clinging snowflakes with quaint art repair 

The dints and furrows of time's envious brunt. 

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind 

Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, 
And win the soil that fain would be unkind, 

To swell his revenues with proud increase! 
He is the gem; and all the landscape wide 

(So doth his grandeur isolate the sense) 
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, 

An empty socket, were he fallen thence. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration ioi 

So, from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 

Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots 
The inspiring earth ; — how otherwise avails 

The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? 
So every year that falls with noiseless flake 

Should fill old scars up on the stormward side, 
And make hoar age revered for age's sake, 

Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. 

So, from the pinched soil of a churlish fate, 

True hearts compel the sap of sturdier growth, 
So between earth and heaven stand simply great, 

That these shall seem but their attendants both; 
For nature's forces with obedient zeal 

Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will ; 
As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, 

And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock him still. 

Lord! all thy works are lessons, — each contains 

Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; 
Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, 

Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? 
Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 

Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, 
Speak but a word, through me, nor let thy love 

Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. 

"On a Bust of General Grant " makes granite 
of the resolution of us all. 

And this excerpt from "Ode to France" has all 
the wonder of a mountain's breath amid its water- 
falls: 

Since first I heard our North wind blow, 
Since first I saw Atlantic throw 
On our fierce rocks his thunderous snow, 
I loved thee, Freedom; as a boy 



102 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

The rattle of thy shield at Marathon 
Did with a Grecian joy 
Through all my pulses run ; 
But I have learned to love thee now 
Without the helm upon thy gleaming brow, 

A maiden mild and undefiled 
Like her who bore the world's redeeming child ; 
And surely never did thy altars glance 
With purer fires than now in France ; 
While, in their bright white flashes, 
Wrong's shadow, backward cast, 
Waves cowering o'er the ashes 

Of the dead, blaspheming Past, 
O'er the shapes of fallen giants, 

His own unburied brood, 
Whose dead hands clench defiance 
At the overpowering Good: 
And down the happy future rims a flood 

Of prophesying light; 
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood, 
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud 
Of Brotherhood and Right. 

And "Columbus" is resolute as fate. We 
shall wait long and probably vainly to get such a 
life-size picture of this Admiral of the Ocean as 
Lowell has taken. I read it when I want to hear 
might mightier than the sea — a resolution strong 
as life: 

The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, 
With freaks of sudden hush. 

But leave we that strange sea music to hear 
Columbus speak: 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 103 

Endurance is the crowning quality, 
And patience all the passion of great hearts ; 
These are their stay, and when the leaden world 
Sets its hard face against their fateful thought, 
And brute strength, like a scornful conqueror, 
Clangs his huge mace down in the other scale, 
The inspired soul but flings his patience in, 
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous globe, — 
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, 
One soul against the flesh of all mankind. 



Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear 

The voice that errs not; then my triumph gleams, 

O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all night 

My heart flies on before me as I sail ; 

Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, 

Which rose like Ganges mid the freezing snows 

Of a world's sordidness, sweep broadening down, 

And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, 

Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea ; 

I see the ungated wall of chaos old, 

With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 

Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist 

Before the irreversible feet of light ; — 

And lo, with what clear omen in the east 

On day's gray threshold stands the eager dawn, 

Like young Leander rosy from the sea 

Glowing at Hero's lattice! 

One day more 
These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me. 
God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded; 
Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which 
I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 
Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so 
Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, 
Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off 
His cheek-swollen mates, and from the leaning mast 
Fortune's full sail strains forward! 



104 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

One poor day! — 
Remember whose and not how short it is ! 
It is God's day, it is Columbus's. 
A lavish day! One day, with life and heart, 
Is more than time enough to find a world. 

"To W. L. Garrison" shall kindle manly 
resolve : 

In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 

Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man; 

The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean; — 
Yet there the freedom of a race began. 

Help came but slowly ; surely no man yet 

Put lever to the heavy world with less: 
What need of help ? He knew how types were set, 

He had a dauntless spirit, and a press. 

Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, 

The compact nucleus round which systems grow! 

Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, 
And whirls impregnate with the central glow. 

O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born 
In the rude stable, in the manger nursed! 

What humble hands unbar those gates of morn 

Through which the splendors of the New Day burst! 

And in "An Incident of the Fire at Hamburg" 
we can but feel the aspiration of a faith that sees 
and claims: 

The tower of old Saint Nicholas soared upward to the skies, 
Like some huge piece of Nature's make, the growth of 

centuries ; 
You could not deem its crowding spires a work of human 

art, 
They seemed to struggle lightward from a sturdy living 

heart. 



Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 105 

Not Nature's self more freely speaks in crystal or in oak, 
Than, through the pious builder's hand, in that gray pile 

she spoke ; 
And as from acorn springs the oak, so, freely and alone, 
Sprang from his heart this hymn to God, sung in obedient 

stone. 

Surge leaping after surge, the fire roared onward red as 

blood, 
Till half of Hamburg lay engulfed beneath the eddying 

flood; 
For miles away, the fiery spray poured down its deadly rain, 
And back and forth the billows sucked, and paused, and 

burst again. 

From square to square with tiger leaps panted the lustful fire, 
The air to leeward shuddered with the gasps of its desire ; 
And church and palace, which even now stood whelmed but 

to the knee, 
Lift their black roofs like breakers lone amid the whirling sea. 

Up in his tower old Herman sat and watched with quiet 

look ; 
His soul had trusted God too long to be at last forsook ; 
He could not fear, for surely God a pathway would unfold 
Through this red sea for faithful hearts, as once he did of old- 

But scarcely can he cross himself, or on his good saint call, 
Before the sacrilegious flood o'erleaped the churchyard wall ; 
And, ere a pater half was said, mid smoke and crackling 

glare, 
His island tower scarce juts its head above the wide despair. 

Upon the peril's desperate peak his heart stood up sublime; 
His first thought was for God above, his next was for his 

chime ; 
"Sing now and make your voices heard in hymns of praise," 

cried he, 
"As did the Israelites of old, safe walking through the sea! 



106 Lowell — His Gospel of Aspiration 

"Through this red sea our God hath made the pathway safe 

to shore ; 
Our promised land stands full in sight; shout now as ne'er 

before ! ' ' 
And as the tower came crashing down, the bells, in clear 

accord, 
Pealed forth the grand old German hymn, — "All good souls, 

praise the Lord!" 

So let this aspiration swing its bells, ringing in 
the sky, now and ever, ever and now, "All good 
souls, praise the LORD!" 






LOWELL— HIS MORAL PASSION 

One thing Lowell is rich in is moral passion. 
To him everything is ethical. That saved him 
from being culturist. Himself had as he wrote 
of another: 

Some pilgrim stuff that hates all sham. 

Governments, policies, religions all appeal to him 
according to their right or wrong. This is high 
praise for him, man and poet. We must love this 
in him. For this mood of his soul himself must 
speak as far as possible. In "On the Capture of 
Certain Fugitive Slaves near Washington," his 
blood boils. Ours too. 

Look on who will in apathy, and stifle they who can, 

The sympathies, the hopes, the words, that make man truly 

man; 
Let those whose hearts are dungeoned up with interest or 

with ease 
Consent to hear with quiet pulse of loathsome deeds Hke 

these! 

I first drew in New England's air, and from her hardy breast 
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest! 

So "Ambrose," which burns hot against all 
bigotry. 

Lowell sees and says in "The Oak": 

Lord, all thy works are lessons. 

107 



108 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

" Extreme Unction" is less a passion against 
priest than against self: 

Heaven's light hath but revealed a track 
Whereby to crawl away from heaven. 

Men think it is an awful sight 

To see a soul just set adrift 
On that drear voyage from whose night 

The ominous shadows never lift; 
But 'tis more awful to behold 

A helpless infant, newly born, 
Whose little hands unconscious hold 

The keys of darkness and of morn. 

Mine held them once ; I flung away 

Those keys that might have open set 
The golden sluices of the day, 

But clutch the keys of darkness yet; — 
I hear the reapers singing go 

Into God's harvest; I, that might 
With them have chosen, here below 

Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 

Nor are we to get at the depths of this passion 
by the hard-and-fast method of quotation. Passion 
is more often a perfume than a petal. As sun- 
beams slide in at closed shutters and between the 
lattice of summer leaves, so this moral element 
in Lowell glints in on all his poetry. In such a 
poem, for illustration, as "A Parable," — a lyric 
sweet with spiritual insight, yet which would not, 
I take it, classify itself in usual thinking as a dis- 
tinctly ethical poem, yet still is this song of heaven 
fairly dripping with the sunshine of ethicality. 






Lowell — His Moral Passion 109 

The lesson inculcated is similar to "The Vision of 
Sir Launfal," namely, that we shall not need to go 
far to find God. He is here as well as there. No 
expense account is contracted in hunting God up. 
His doings, his smiles, his reaching hand, his 
heavenly bread are all anear and not afar. 
Beautiful deeds of good are being wrought 
momently. Stars are here every night, and the 
sun every day; and the growing flowers and the 
growing children and the waxing of love, are 
these not daily occurrences ? In the highest sense 
is this sort of inculcation ethical, though we may 
not see its ethicality like the blazon on the shield. 
Read the poem and get the Lowell method — the 
moral saturation. 

The little daughter stands with the violet in her 
hand, held up for her father's taking. We see all 
that. His face is clouded. He, bending, waits to 
kiss her, and is gone seeking for the voice of God. 
He journeys, thinking that God hath forgotten 
this world. Then a serious prophet, praying face 
to the ground looking for a sign, sees how 

From out the rock's hard bosom 
Sprang a tender violet. 

Worn and footsore was the Prophet, 
When he gained the holy hill; 

"God has left the earth, " he murmured, 
"Here his presence lingers still. 



no Lowell — His Moral Passion 

"God of all the olden prophets, 

Wilt thou speak with men no more ? 

Have I not as truly served thee 
As thy chosen ones of yore ? 

"Hear me, guider of my fathers, 
Lo! a humble heart is mine; 

By thy mercy I beseech thee 
Grant thy servant but a sign! " 

Bowing then his head, he listened 
For an answer to his prayer ; 

No loud burst of thunder followed, 
Not a murmur stirred the air : — 

But the tuft of moss before him 
Opened while he waited yet, 

And, from out the rock's hard bosom, 
Sprang a tender violet. 

"God! I thank thee, " said the Prophet; 

"Hard of heart and blind was I, 
Looking to the holy mountain 

For the gift of prophecy. 

"Still thou speakest with thy children 

Freely as in eld sublime ; 
Humbleness, and love, and patience, 

Shall give empire over time. 

"Had I trusted in my nature, 
And had faith in lowly things, 

Thou thyself wouldst then have sought me, 
And set free my spirit's wings. 

" But I looked for signs and wonders, 
That o'er men should give me sway; 

Thirsting to be more than mortal, 
I was even less than clay. 



Lowell — His Moral Passion hi 

"Ere I entered on my journey, 

As I girt my loins to start, 
Ran to me my little daughter, 

The beloved of my heart; — 

"In her hand she held a flower, 

Like to this as like may be, 
Which, beside my very threshold, 

She had plucked and brought to me. " 

And so his prayer had answer which it had at 
the beginning of his quest, had he but known the 
answer to the prayer. 

Or "A Legend of Brittany." What is this but 
a lesson unlit by any smiling, and fierce with ret- 
ribution ? Lowell cannot be quit of his moral- 
ities. Feel this tense morality in Hosea. 

Truth shall not fail. Its wings are strong and 
it can flv, a concept embodied in "The Falcon": 

I know a falcon swift and peerless 
As e'er was cradled in the pine; 

No bird had ever eye so fearless, 
Or wing so strong as this of mine. 

The winds not better love to pilot 
A cloud with molten gold o'errun, 

Than him, a little burning islet, 
A star above the coming sun. 

For with a lark's heart he doth tower, 
By a glorious upward instinct drawn; 

No bee nestles deeper in the flower 
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn. 

No harmless dove, no bird that singe th, 

Shudders to see him overhead; 
The rush of his fierce swooping bringeth 

To innocent hearts no thrill of dread. 



H2 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

Let fraud and wrong and baseness shiver, 

For still between them and the sky 
The falcon Truth hangs poised forever 

And marks them with his vengeful eye. 

"The Sower" is, to my thinking, the most thrill- 
ing poem Lowell has penned. I do not suggest 
it may be so to others; I simply express an indi- 
vidual thrill. The wonder, the beauty, the blind- 
ness, the lean hand, the sowing figure, the seed 
scattering against the wind, the voice, the rush as 
the hammering of the flail of words blind as blind- 
ness — really in this poem is some of the weird 
Poe atmosphere. As a fact this enticing poem is 
a sermon from a text, text and sermon both from 
Lowell : 

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 

uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast 

of Truth. 

For myself I profess that both sermon and truth 
are telling. I feel their serene veracity. The new 
time is something other than the old time; some- 
thing bigger truly; but the old time, in Shake- 
speare's apt phrasing, 

Doth suffer a sea change 

Into something rich and strange. 

We not only grow out of the past but outgrow 
our past. At first this poem would hardly have 
credentials as a minister at an altar; but it is no less. 



Lowell — His Moral Passion i 13 

Squeeze the poem to a pulp and the drops squeezed 
from it are moralities. We feel "Excalibur": 



I saw a Sower walking slow 

Across the earth, from east to west; 
His hair was white as mountain snow, 

His head drooped forward on his breast. 

With shriveled hands he flung his seed, 
Nor ever turned to look behind; 

Of sight or sound he took no heed ; 

It seemed he was both deaf and blind. 

His dim face showed no soul beneath, 

Yet in my heart I felt a stir, 
As if I looked upon the sheath 

That once had clasped Excalibur. 

I heard, as still the seed he cast, 

How, crooning to himself, he sung, — 

"I sow again the holy Past, 

The happy days when I was young. 

"Then all was wheat without a tare, 
Then all was righteous, fair, and true; 

And I am he whose thoughtful care 
Shall plant the Old World in the New. 

"The fruitful germs I scatter free, 

With busy hand, while all men sleep: 

In Europe now, from sea to sea, 

The nations bless me as they reap." 

Then I looked back along his path, 
And heard the clash of steel on steel, 

Where man faced man, in deadly wrath, 
While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal. 

The sky with burning towns flared red, 
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled, 

And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, 
Crept, curdling, over pavements cold. 



ii4 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

Then marked I how each germ of truth 
Which through the dotard's fingers ran 

Was mated with a dragon's tooth 

Whence there sprang up an armed man. 

I shouted, but he could not hear; 

Made signs, but these he could not see; 
And still, without a doubt or fear, 

Broadcast he scattered anarchy. 

Long to my straining ears the blast 

Brought faintly back the words he sung: — 

"I sow again the holy Past, 

The happy days when I was young." 

The "Commemoration Ode" is severe; so is 
the "Concord Ode"; so is "Under the Old 
Elm," the gist of them being that God must 
mix his effort with man's effort if a country is to 
grow and stay great and worthy to be loved. 

"Under the Willows" is sermonic too, as wit- 
nesses such a telltale thought as his taking his 
being clean from God. 

The moral passion will not let him go, but grips 
him fast as an iron grip. 

Read "Wendell Phillips": 

He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide 

The din of battle and of slaughter rose ; 
He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 

That sank in seeming loss before its foes ; 
Many there were who made great haste and sold 

Unto the cunning enemy their swords, 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, 

And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went 

And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 



Lowell — His Moral Passion 115 

Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 

And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 

Through all the widespread veins of endless good. 

"Pictures from Appledore" is a brawny piece 
of writing filled with sea sky and sea wind and 
tatter of foam from the wild billows, brawny with 
the sprawl of rocks and spring of cliffs, and the 
bleak coast only splintery crags. A nature poem ? 
Yes, gladly yes. But the ethical passion, here as 
otherwhere and everywhere with this poet, makes 
its call above the calling sea. Something besides 
the sea moans at Appledore. 

And in "The Forlorn," note how the moral 
quality submerges music and all beside: 

The night is dark, the stinging sleet, 

Swept by the bitter gusts of air, 
Drives whistling down the lonely street, 

And stiffens on the pavement bare. 

The street-lamps flare and struggle dim 

Through the white sleet-clouds as they pass, 

Or, governed by a boisterous whim, 
Drop down and rattle on the glass. 

One poor, heartbroken, outcast girl 
Faces the east-wind's searching flaws, 

And, as about her heart they whirl, 

Her tattered cloak more tightly draws. 

The flat brick walls look cold and bleak, 
Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze: 

Yet dares she not a shelter seek, 

Though faint with hunger and disease. 



1 16 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, 
And, piercing through her garments thin, 

Beats on her shrunken breast, and there 
Makes colder the cold heart within. 

She lingers where a ruddy glow 

Streams outward through an open shutter, 
Adding more bitterness to woe, 

More loneness to desertion utter. 

One half the cold she had not felt 
Until she saw this gush of light 

Spread warmly forth, and seem to melt 

Its slow way through the deadening night. 

She hears a woman's voice within, 

Singing sweet words her childhood knew, 

And years of misery and sin 

Furl off, and leave her heaven blue. 

Her freezing heart, like one who sinks 
Outwearied in the drifting snow, 

Drowses to deadly sleep and thinks 
No longer of its hopeless woe: 

Old fields, and clear blue summer days, 
Old meadows, green with grass and trees, 

That shimmer through the trembling haze 
And whiten in the western breeze, — 

Old faces, — all the friendly past 

Rises within her heart again, 
And sunshine from her childhood cast 

Makes summer of the icy rain. 

Enhaloed by a mild, warm glow, 

From all humanity apart, 
She hears old footsteps wandering slow 

Through the lone chambers of her heart. 

Outside the porch before the door, 
Her cheek upon the cold, hard stone, 

She lies, no longer foul and poor, 
No longer dreary and alone. 



Lowell — His Moral Passion 117 

Next morning something heavily 
Against the opening door did weigh, 

And there, from sin and sorrow free, 
A woman on the threshold lay. 

A smile upon the wan lips told 

That she had found a calm release, 

And that, from out the want and cold, 
The song had borne her soul in peace. 

For, whom the heart of man shuts out, 
Sometimes the heart of God takes in, 

And fences them all round about 

With silence mid the world's loud din. 

In this chapter the effort has not been to 
take the poems distinctly ethical, but such as 
are indistinctly ethical. As genius is never a 
moment absent from Shakespeare, so the moral 
passion is never for a moment absent from 
Lowell. 

Probably "The Singing Leaves" would be as 
far a remove from this moral passion as one could 
easily conjure up. It is a ballad. It is Lowell 
at his level best. It lilts as a bobolink. If any 
music is in the heart this ballad will set that heart 
singing. 

The story of "The Singing Leaves" can hardly 
be told by me without shame, because any other 
voice than the poet's own in this beautiful ballad 
makes discord. But to essay it. The king as he 
starts to Vanity Fair asks of each of his three 



n8 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

daughters, "What shall I bring you?" Where- 
upon each makes reply. The eldest asks for 
pearls and diamonds and rings of gold; the second 
for silks and a golden comb; while the youngest, 
she of the golden hair, asks for the singing leaves. 
And her king-father is wroth with her and thinks 
her less than king's daughter in her request. 
What his elder daughters asked for was easy in 
the buying. Silks and gold combs and diamonds 
and rings are in every mart. But the singing 
leaves of the youngest girl's request are nowhere 
to be bought. No merchant is found with these 
in stock. And so the king goes vainly asking of 
every tree : 



When 



"Oh, if you have ever a singing leaf 
I pray you give it me!" 

The trees all kept their counsel, 



and his quest was "very bootless," Walter, the 
king's page, made answer that himself could find 
the singing leaves if the king would promise to 
give the page the first thing which should meet him 
as he came home to his castle. " 'Twill be my 
dog," the king thought, and saw the sunny face 
of his youngest daughter with her tears washing 
her sunniness away if he came without her singing 
leaves, and made the promise. Then Walter the 
page took from his breast poems which had sung 



Lowell — His Moral Passion 119 

from his heart. He loved the king's young daugh- 
ter. She in turn loved him. And when the king 
came home and found first to greet him was she 
of the sunny face and hair, love had its way once 
more. Love was kinglier than kingly blood and 
name. This is the simple story of the Singing 
Leaves, simply told. 

The singing ballad has lured me. I cannot keep 
its singing out. Like lute and voice of Walter the 
page, it has its way with us. But as touching moral 
passion, this ballad is instinct with it. The ballad 
teaches democracy. It is the lyric of love. It is 
the assertion of love's right and of love's regality. 
It convinces even the skeptical that love must 
be let run its way, and must not be hindered by 
pedigree of kings. It sings that Walter the 
page is princelier far than any king; for genius 
is his crown and kingdom. "He holds of his 
lute in fee." The freedom of genius and the 
freedom of love are moral passions not less than 
prayer. 

Or the "Biglow Papers," are they not fierce with 
diatribe, with sword hack, with the lightning 
shooting arrows against wrong ? Are they not 
eternized maledictions against evil ? Do they not 
breathe the breath of God ? 

Lowell as amorist may or may not be brother 
toHerrick of "Hesperides"; but Lowell as moral 



■H 



120 Lowell — His Moral Passion 

passionist must be set down as relative of that 
great Puritan who wrote: 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; 

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 
Forget not : in thy book record their groans 

Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 

O'er all th' Italian fields, where still doth sway 
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow 

A hundredfold, who having learned thy way 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 



LOWELL— THE GRAIL 

A STUDY OF THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 

The likelihood is that "Sir Launfal" will be 
most enduring of Lowell's poems. It is both a 
lyric and a romancist poem. It is both life and 
nature. June and winter are both there. Bleak- 
ness and gladness each makes music. The north 
wind trumpets, and the south wind whispers like 
a sleepy voice. 

Less inequality is here than is usual with 
Lowell. It is beautiful and sublime. If the 
steadfast sublimity of the "Commemoration Ode" 
be wanting, the subject is so hospitable to higher 
thought as to lift the entire lyric into an oratorio. 
We may safely say that here Lowell is at his 
manly best. 

The Holy Grail has ever blown spring breath 
on the poets' hearts. Such as love the pure are 
readily accessible to this holy romance. The Grail 
was the Cup out of which the wine of the Last 
Supper was drunk and, as the legend runs, was 
brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathaea, and 
kept in watch of holy knights; but one keeper 
having thought uncleanly the Holy Grail vanished. 
Thereafter knightly quests were many in search 



122 Lowell — The Grail 

of this Holy Cup. Only the pure could find : only 
the pure could keep. We must allow this is a 
beautiful dream and, besides this, is a Christian 
dream. The holiness without which man is not 
acceptable to God is a Scripture ethical notion. 
You cannot find a trace of it in Greek ethics. It 
was a star which burned not in their sky. 

Abbey's cartoons in Boston Library are noble 
works of art, and glow in memory like a setting 
sun; and they are descriptive of a life given over to 
the search for the Holy Grail. I love to look upon 
them. They make my heart ache to be better. 
The colors, crimson and lily white, are apt con- 
cepts; for the Christ makes white by the crimson 
of his blood. All else of life is lesser to this seeker 
of the Grail. He finds it if his heart is pure; he 
holds it if his hands are clean. So thus the pic- 
tures bloom, light-white, blood-red, with splendors 
enduring beyond the sunset's radiant tints. 

Tennyson has Sir Galahad and Sir Percival; 
and in the exquisite "Idylls of the King," the Round 
Table of King Arthur is brought to naught by the 
best knights becoming seekers of the Grail. They 
left their sword and honest battle; left their king 
alone to keep the world against the lawless breeds 
of men, left him to fail, while they were making 
quest after a vision. 

Doubtless this was the thought at which Sir 



Lowell — The Grail 123 

Launfal really looks, though, to be sure, no poet 
can give genesis of his poet speech. Poems come 
as the winds drift. The winds of God bring them. 
Yet may we speculate on the hid, uncertain intent. 
One thing may rest undisputed, namely, against 
this skyey Grail-search, and in behalf of honest 
serviceableness in this quest, is this poem to be 
construed. Such meaning renders this poem gra- 
ciously effective. 

Sir Launfal, having recorded the vow to make 
quest of the Sangreal, is reminded of his vow by a 
radiant day of radiant June. Youth is on him and 
on the world. You feel the lilt and lift and laugh- 
ter of the visionary month when roses blow and wild 
grapes perfume the air with their sweet musk 
breath. The world is at its June: 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers ; 
The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace ; 



124 Lowell — The Grail 

The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast nutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best ? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, 

Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it ; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For other couriers we should not lack ; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving ; 
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — ■ 

'Tis the natural way of living. 



Lowell — The Grail 125 

His dreaming loudens into his call: 

" My golden spurs now bring to me, 

And bring to me my richest mail, 
For to-morrow I go over land and sea 

In search of the Holy Grail ; 
Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
Here on the rushes will I sleep, 
And perchance there may come a vision true 
Ere day create the world anew." 

Then he sleeps and dreams: 

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 
And into his soul the vision flew. 

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 

In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees, 

The little birds sang as if it were 

The one day of summer in all the year, 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees : 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray : 
'Twas the proudest hall in the North Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be, 
Save to lord or lady of high degree ; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied ; 
She could not scale the chilly wall, 
Though round it for leagues her pavilions tall 
Stretched left and right, 
Over hills and out of sight ; 

Green and broad was every tent, 

And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 



126 Lowell — The Grail 

Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 

In his siege of three hundred summers long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 

Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, 
And lightsome as a locust-leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail, 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 

You feel Sir Launfal is elate as June. One 
blood runs in the veins of each. The strength, 
the hope, the joy, the rejoicing in the simple love of 
life, the rapture of robust strength, the dash across 
the surly drawbridge, the passing into the world 
of room for getting and for doing — all are here. 
June is in the heart and June is in the sky. The 
grim castle is like an outpost of winter, but chal- 
lenges June to gladness of lark and song. 

But at the threshold of his search for the Grail 
a loathsome sight shocked his sensibilities: 

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate, 

He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate ; 

And a loathing over Sir Launfal came ; 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 



Lowell — The Grail 127 

He cannot tarry from so large a quest to stay for 
such a common thing as dull disease. He searches 
for the Grail. His enterprise is heavenly; and 
this lazar-house patient sends his stench abroad 
when such high deeds are in process! This, when 
we think of it, is a natural sentiment. The remote 
seems worthy: the near seems cheap. To people 
who have stood tranced upon the Transfiguration 
hill, how lean must look a common sick man on 
the descent. The ideal fascinates as the real does 
not. Reading poetry is more engaging than 
sweeping streets. Caring for the sick is not an 
exploit compared with being a crusader. Just 
this is the deadly peril of a good life. The com- 
mon appears common. We all have to guard us 
against Sir Launfal's fallacy: we are all of his 
tendency. And so having flung, with ungenerous 
generosity, a gold coin for the leper's needs, Sir 
Launfal rides away from the diseased breath, to 
the hope and wildness of the June breath of 
roses and growing things. But 

The leper raised not the gold from the dust : 
" Better to me the poor man's crust, 
Better the blessing of the poor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door ; 
That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; 
He gives nothing but worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 



128 Lowell — The Grail 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 

Youth in its joy, living at its June, going for 
the Grail. 

So flowers the June. And how princely does 
Sir Launfal ride; but the coin lies in the dust and 
the leper has no help. Whither must the knight 
ride to find the Holy Grail ? Years pass. Sir Laun- 
fal is still at quest. It is winter now. June is 
dead, dead in the year and dead in Sir Launfal's 
life: 

Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old ; 

On open wold and hilltop bleak 
It had gathered all the cold, 

And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; 

It carried a shiver everywhere 

From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launfal' s gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was, "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 

The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 



Lowell — The Grail 129 

The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 

When an alien at his own castle gate, Sir Laun- 
fal dreams, as he shivers, of summer climes where 
once again, as years agone, he was where youth 
and life were June. He hears: 

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" — 
The happy camels may reach the spring, 
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing, 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 

And Sir Launfal said, "I behold in thee 

An image of Him who died on the tree; 

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 

Thou also hast had the world's buffet and scorns, 

And to thy life were not denied 

The wounds in his hands and feet and side: 

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 

Behold, through him, I give to thee!" 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 

Remembered in what a haughtier guise 
He had flung an alms to leprosie, 

When he girt his young life up in gilded mail 

And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 

The heart within him was ashes and dust; 

He parted in twain his single crust, 

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 

And gave the leper to eat and drink, 



130 Lowell — The Grail 



'Twas a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 
'Twas water out of a wooden bowl, — 

Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 
And 'twas red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side, 

But stood before him glorified, 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate,— 

Himself the Gate whereby men can 

Enter the temple of God in Man. 

"In many climes, without avail, 

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail ; 

Behold it is here, — this cup which thou 

Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now ; 

This crust is my body broken for thee, 

This water His blood that died on the tree ; 

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 

In whatso we share with another's need; 

Not what we give, but what we share, — 

For the gift without the giver is bare ; 

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, — 

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. " 

And thenceforth all he had was at the service of 

mankind: 

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — 
"The Grail in my castle here is found! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
Let it be the spider's banquet hall; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail. " 

The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 

As the hangbird is to the elm- tree bough; 
No longer scowl the turrets tall, 



Lowell — The Grail 131 

The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 

When the first poor outcast went in at the door, 

She entered with him in disguise, 

And mastered the fortress by surprise ; 

There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 

She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; 

The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 

Has hall and bower at his command; 

And there's no poor man in the North Countree 

But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 

Lowell has come to the heart of the matter. 
Practical Christianity is living as Christ lived, and 
loving as Christ loved. This poem embodies the 
ethics of the gospel. This Lowell saw; this Lowell 
sung. And may his song hearten good deeds while 
time endures ! And beyond chance it will. 



LOWELL— THE CATHEDRAL 

A STUDY IN RELIGIOUS INADEQUACY 

"The Cathedral" is Lowell's sole poem in 
which the religious problem is frankly stated and 
plainly argued. As has been seen, the ethical 
aspects of religion Lowell treated in varying 
moods and with keen insight. The Puritan was 
unconsciously plying his shuttles. And we come 
to this explicit religious study with warming heart, 
big with hope. The poet, we feel, will have the 
Pisgah vision. We shall hear the great, brave 
word this day; and seer and prophet, the one who 
sees and the one who tells, will bring us help. 

The pathos of "The Cathedral" is that such 

hopes are to be blighted. Religiously considered, 

"The Cathedral" is to my feeling, as also to my 

thinking, unsatisfactory in the extreme. I think it 

must prove so to anyone who believes with industry 

and strength in a divine Christ, and in a great Faith 

and a glorious Salvation. Some are so glad for 

crumbs under a poet's table that they take a crumb 

and magnify it into a loaf. But if we are to ask the 

plain facts unlit by imagination we shall go away 

from "The Cathedral" saddened. Lowell did 

himself. I recall how many times since I was a 

132 



Lowell — The Cathedral 133 

college lad, when I read this poem first, I have 
gone wandering through the cathedral music, 
for Lowell has hit upon the organ voice not once 
but often in this poem, — wandering, thinking 
there must be at the last, past all dim doubts and 
demurrings, a sudden last leap of glorious faith : 
and when the last sob of the organ melts from the 
cathedral arches we are left in the cathedral and 
not led into the sky. We are disappointed. We 
are sadly disappointed. There was room for the 
lift of eagle's wings; but they were not lifted. We 
left sunlight to enter the fane: we never recovered 
the lost sunlight. The poem might be entitled 
" The Lost Sunlight." Himself was at a loss what 
to call his poem. He did name it "A Day at 
Chartres"; Field renamed it "The Cathedral." 
Let us have a hand and name it once more, from 
the lost light of it, "The Lost Sunlight." 

The poem topic is the same as Browning's 
"Christmas Eve." Epitomized, "Christmas Eve" 
is: The poet, driven by drench of rain to shelter 
in a little stuffy church whose door opened 

with a scold 
Of the crazy hinge, 

and disgusted with the scents and temperature, 
and the occupants and what they did and said — 

Out of the little chapel I burst 
Into the fresh night air again, 



134 Lowell — The Cathedral 

but knows not in the end whether he had or had 
not left the church, whether all were dream but 
this: he had been in a place rancid to him at first, 
but as he left it in disgust, or thought he had, 
Christ came out. 

Christ had been there; and then, with this 
strange blaze of glory-light upon his heart, all his 
previous disgust and pride of reasoning shrunk 
from him, as he saw how holy was the place and 
how inadequate all the reasonings which had left 
Christ less than God. Browning's "Christmas 
Eve" is an apocalypse. 

To Lowell, a happy day unknowing care comes 
in memory. Such days cannot be forgot. He 
wandered free. His mind was blithe. He knew 
not whither his feet went, but they led him till 
he was confronted by a minster whose repose was 
noble as a sea cliff left inland by receding seas, 
which hears anon the lunges of the sea and longs 
for them with immitigable desire, feeling and 
hearing the vanished seas more than the noise 
of men. He looked and was thralled. The old 
architects had their way with him. He was Goth 
like them. He thrilled to the wonder of their 
aspiration which wrote itself down in spires that 
leaped into the sky and walls that built a barrier 
against a sea of years. The pile was grim — grim 
with the Norsemen and grim as Norsemen, men 



Lowell — The Cathedral 135 

of battle and the sea. Nothing airy light was 
here. No Greek flashlight of architecture like 
laughter. The cathedral was eloquent yet mute 
with the great thoughts which are eternal, such 
as life and doom and death. He looked; and the 
sense of creative genius of days and moods which 
made such noble structures possible, assailed his 
self-conceit, his little pride, his poise. He felt his 
age was a reciter, not a creator of eloquence. 
He was sobered, subdued, and browbeaten with 
a sense of menace. Himself was Puritan; and 
he thinks of his Puritan forbears who had 
deemed entering a Roman Catholic cathedral 
idolatrous. They were more granite than he. 
He was not larger than they, though this aspect 
did not impress the poet. He was not the man 
to slur those men for that. After the cathedral 
incense and dim window and robed priest he came 
out as one lost in thought. 

So opens up this study of religion in Lowell's 
soul. This atrium, it will be seen, is much more 
stately than the porch of Browning's poem. But 
the poem here does not measure up to this stately 
prelude. We had thought in such a minster 
calm, we had had the sea-wave lift, toward 
or into heaven. Not so. His doubts come 
as Browning's came. Each has clear view of 
the critical attack on Christianity. Browning 



136 Lowell — The Cathedral 

plows through it seeing how inadequate it is; 
Lowell is befogged by it, never coming out 
from these critical fogbanks, drowsing in them 
rather. 

None the less, however, does Lowell's study fit 
our thought. He represents an untriumphant 
mood of faith. The thing he takes; the road he 
does not see. He ends with that rather dreary 
and now hackneyed phrase of miracles being 
commonplace. 

Lowell's religious faith is not vital. Of his 
religious life I do not speak. That is not fitting. 
He was chaste and strong and manly, a poet whose 
life was brother to the purest and the best. We 
must not fault him in his life. We gladden at 
the sight of it, as at the sight of the first flower 
of spring. He was the Christian ether; but he 
knew it not. His head had not, I take it, gotten 
where his heart had come. 

In this cathedral where he sat and mingled with 
the worshiping, doubts take him by the throat. 
He felt regret. Is the old religion undone by the 
skeptic present ? Is it a remnant of a darkened 
mood ? Did fate or fear make God ? Did igno- 
rance minister to doubt until now faith is dead 
and only doubt is alive ? At this juncture of his 
thought he saw a beldame kneeling telling her 
beads, whereat his spirit jeered though, sanely, 



Lowell — The Cathedral 137 

but a moment. His better second thought was 
that whatever touches life with the upward 
impulse has in it something of God because God 
may certainly be affirmed to be in whatever gives 
freedom or exalts or that consoles and sweetens 
and makes humble. 

He feels them happy who wander not beyond 
the succor of the household faith. Her lowly 
kneeling, in a moment, brings the poet to his 
knees; and he had what the apostle named faith, 
"the evidence of things not seen," though he 
had not that glorious faith "which is the sub- 
stance of things hoped for." His vision was 
momentary, passing swift as an arrow's flight. 
And then his equivocal mood sat up again and 
said its say about this age of question marks, 
this century which is scientist, dissects with 
surgeon knife or tries in acids to dissolve our 
gold and pushes back the neighborly skies to 
distances remote and sows them with dim stars 
scant sown. 

To one who so clearly sees the weakness of his 
time the omens are propitious, one would think, 
to cut way through the tangle and emerge in the 
wide levels leading to the sky. But my thought 
is the poet states his own unfaith when he says 
that though wholesome and homelike that old 
faith is gone beyond recovery. His doubt queries 



138 Lowell — The Cathedral 

whether the Rock of Ages be dissolved in the 
scientific chemic laboratory. He gives brief but 
lucid exposition to the scientific attitude toward 
Christianity. He sees that man cannot push 
God out, cannot alienate himself. 

He feels; and when he feels, he has sight. His 
feelings have wider vision than his thoughts. His 
ailment is that he trusted in the long run to 
thought rather than feeling, not perceiving feeling 
might be trusted in that upper realm where man 
meets God. Experience counts. Experience in 
God is all. Tennyson knew that. "I have felt," 
he said, and rested there. Lowell felt and did not 
rest there. Thus he failed to give leadership to 
faith. Would he had had wings and had made 
them fly! 

No man who thinks and takes stock of him- 
self, but finds in himself at times an account- 
able fineness of feeling, some richer vein than he 
had known his life concealed. He asserts that 
himself prays at morning and at evening and has 
the finer feeling to be sure that his mother's knee 
is better school than all the Platos had known to 
teach. He had a time or two a cloudless vision 
of God. There spoke the man. Would he had 
tried oftener or had succeeded more! 

Himself at prayer beside his mother, is so 
sweetly said as to have made us all children 



Lowell — The Cathedral 139 

and a-kneeling at our academe, our mother's knee. 
He cannot decide who is worse enemy, he who 
would rob him of his faith and leave him naked 
against the storm, or such as make rituals and 
robes and painted saints cloud God's face. 

He has lost the power of worship. His father's 
faith is burdensome to him. Compulsory prayer 
seems to him but a vacuum. That old wrestling 
with God which made the Puritans, Cromwell 
and the rest, big as a story sky — has lost majesty 
to him. Alas for him! His blood was thinner 
than theirs. They fought their way to faith: he 
felt his way to doubt. They were more sons of 
Anak than he. Unfaith pleases him. He caresses 
it. This confession is sad, at least to me. His 
fathers' faith had elemental grandeur. He mag- 
nifies doubt. He overloads the word "supersti- 
tion." He does not cut with clearness as if he 
were lapidist. 

He states in weaker phrase Tennyson's 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

Both Tennyson's and Lowell's accent is wrong. 
They had a truth, but it was not so roomy as 
they thought. True enough, but not quite true 
as he means it, possibly. Those who hold high 
faiths are not to be set down as holding blind 
faiths. Great faith is wise faith and not blind 



140 Lowell — The Cathedral 

faith. This age is no cathedral builder, he sadly 
says, which is true enough of such a dubitative 
faith as his, but most distinctly is not true of 
more stalwart faith. Cathedrals were never built 
as now. Doubt will not build them: doubt can- 
not build them. Faith can, and does, and will. 
Have Christ; and cathedrals are majesties very 
accessible. 

Democracy does not need to haggle with Bethle- 
hem nor Calvary. The manger and the cross are 
very dear to such as know where enduring democ- 
racies are rooted. They are rooted there, not other- 
wheres. He queries of this Western giant, Democ- 
racy, "How make him reverent toward God?" 
Readily, if the Giant knows the King of kings was 
our chief democrat and created democracies. 
Lowell's characterization of our Frontiersman 
maker of empires, is stirring, contagious work. 
He feels him the large-limbed Goth. 

He feels sure that man's soul dwells somewhere 
in the neighborhood of God, else how had it 
become such noble legend. But he thinks the 
miracle is myth. "The miracle fades out of 
history" is what this poet says; and here is his 
failure as prophet. Miracle scares him. He had 
not a God-Christ. Such as have Him need have 
no such decadence of miracle. Miracles never 
stood safer than this hour. Christ is the widest 



Lowell — The Cathedral 141 

miracle; and since he is and came, miracle sits 
surely on the throne. 

He wonders if whether what we deem God's 
voice be not hallucination, as sometimes we make 
sure we hear our mother's voice long silent, a dream 
quite beautiful and yet a dream. But man shall 
grope in spite of himself, because of himself. 
This is vision, but not adequate. His Christ 
does not bulk enough; his cross is not burdened 
by a God. He cannot be quit of the Western 
Goth who, may chance, is not all the Goth 
he thinks him. He is greater than this poet 
knows. Democracy is not such a vandal as our 
poet guesses. This common man is not so cut 
with doubts, nor with such doubts as beset the 
poet's self. The common man is wondrous wise. 
He does not affect philosophy but has it. Lowell 
sees his Goth find God is all that pays. 

The world is so lacking in completeness, satis- 
faction, profit, that these drive a soul to wor- 
shiping something not himself but an ideal self. 
And when the poet phrases that ideal self, it is so 
strangely and strongly like Christ as to make the 
pulses thrill, though whether the poet knows the 
resemblance we may not say, or whether he 
thought that his own ideal had contrived this high 
personality. The ideal is to be some divine 
somewhat brotherly and no stickler for trifles, 



142 Lowell — The Cathedral 

a hater of cant and one who takes pleasure 
in the world. Who is such save One, He of the 
open fields and lover of the skies and walker 
across the fields fresh plowed and through human 
hearts new plowed by storm and passion and 
deep sin and beside graves and through them with 
resurrections in his hands and abundant forgive- 
ness and abundant strengths ? 

But Lowell does not step with such firm foot. 
His faith is too tenuous. It tears apart like air 
when you try to grip it in your fist. This One 
is served on smoking field of war or obscure toil 
or at the ballot honestly and valorously cast or in 
truth stood for against all odds or good deeds 
done without regard to a reward. Yes, doubtless. 
But by a strenuous doctrine of One who himself 
bare our sins in his own body on the tree. 

He walked out of the minster saddened. And 
little wonder. It is not, as he thinks, that all 
thought is sad, but that such dubitative thought 
is sad. There are not latent valors in this thin 
blood of such a faith competent to contend with 
doubt in masterful fashion as the Christ wrestled 
the devil down on the long yellow hills of barren 
Quarantania. 

The sparrows chatter on the images: the spar- 
row hawk flings bigger shadow than his prey — 
which things are sad. The cathedral has not 



Lowell — The Cathedral 143 

lifted the song. But out from the old gray minster 
the poet lifts his voice. It sounds a trumpet. 
If he would but let it blow blast after blast, blast 
on blast, and "set the wild echoes flying"! 

"O Power," he calls, and sings that he has 
evidence of Him outside, above and yet within. 

Would " The Cathedral " might have ended 
here! But it did not. Doubt dug its rowels in 
his soul once again. He must file a caveat. He 
would not let the sun set on his Cathedral, all in a 
wash of glory like a wine-red sea. God is here, 
but scarcely Christ. The omnipotent is missing. 
The king has not come to his coronation. 

If this rendition of "The Cathedral" seem to 
some lacking in fire, consider where lies the fault. 
It is doubt's protest, doubt's poem. Not requiem, 
not that; but there is no paean in it. The note of 
knowledge does not invade it sufficiently to make 
matchless music. Contrast the finale of " Christ- 
mas Eve" and see how boldly and gloriously 
there the Christ stands, so that to touch his gar- 
ment or to kiss his feet has expiation in it, and a 
song. 

"The Cathedral" is hesitant. It is all along, 
and in the end, dubitant. Sometimes it has the 
truth; sometimes, oftentimes, states the case fairly 
and squarely. The doubt element is expression of 
the age. No one doubts that. The atmosphere is 



144 Lowell — The Cathedral 

accurate. We fault not that. But where the 
fault lies as a Christian poem is, it fails because 
it does not journey far enough. It gropes to the 
end. That is not Christian. 'Tis a theistic poem, 
truly, but not a Christ poem. There lies its lack, 
its fallacy, its absence of a song. A great Christ 
had with our poet drenched his "Cathedral" with 
music outsounding seas, making one look to find 
the angels who made the ecstasy. 



LOWELL— THE LIFE OF FAITH 

Lowell was, I hope I have in a fashion made 
apparent, subconsciously what he was. His 
formulated creed had been less satisfying than his 
life. He was too academical to put Christ at 
Christ's place — that or some other reason, though 
to me it seems kinder or truer to put it down as an 
academical lack. But as with moral passion, so 
with the hopes which spring from the gospel of the 
Christ. He believed in God but did not so truly 
"Believe also in me," as Christ so frankly and 
explicitly bade us. But his subconscious faith 
felt its way toward God. He was never heathen 
in ethics nor in faith. He was bigger and truer 
than that. The utter surrender to faith in God, 
which makes life illimitably glad, he did not know, 
or if he knew he did not tell. And those lifts of the 
tide of his love and faith, toward "the hope that 
maketh not ashamed," we may trace with rever- 
ent gladness. 

Read "On the Death of a Friend's Child": 

'Tis sorrow builds the shining ladder up, 
Whose golden rounds are our calamities, 
Whereon our firm, feet planting, nearer God 
The spirit climbs, and hath its eyes unsealed. 
145 



146 Lowell — The Life of Faith 

True is it that Death's face seems stern and cold, 

When he is sent to summon those we love, 

But all God's angels come to us disguised; 

Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 

One after other lift their frowning masks, 

And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 

All radiant with the glory and the calm 

Of having looked upon the front of God. 

With every anguish of our earthly part 

The spirit's sight grows clearer; this was meant 

When Jesus touched the blind man's lids with clay. 

Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent 

To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free. 

Here spoke a Christian hope. 

"Sea Weed" expresses faith. 

The sense of God, and the avenging of him 
when the days of wrath are full, are written in fire : 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and 

the Word; 
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim 

unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his 



We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is 
great, 

Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of 
fate, 

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, 

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave 
within, — 

"They enslave their children's children who make com- 
promise with sin.' ' 



Lowell — The Life of Faith 147 

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is 

strong, 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her 

throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all 

wrong. 

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see, 
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Ob- 
livion's sea; 
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry 
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet 
earth's chaff must fly. 

The purpose for which life is, here and here- 
after, is written in "Elegy on the Death of Dr. 
Channing": 

And often, from that other world, on this 

Some gleams from great souls gone before may shine, 

To shed on struggling hearts a clearer bliss, 
And clothe the Right with luster more divine. 

Thou art not idle: in thy higher sphere 
Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, 

And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here 
Is all the crown and glory that it asks. 

For sure, in Heaven's wide chambers, there is room 
For love and pity, and for helpful deeds; 

Else were our summons thither but a doom 
To life more vain than this in clayey weeds. 

From off the starry mountain peak of song, 
Thy spirit shows me, in the coming time, 

An earth unwithered by the foot of wrong, 
A race revering its own soul sublime. 



148 Lowell — The Life of Faith 

His dimness speaks in "Bibliolatres": 

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, 

And thinking the great God is thine alone, 

O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook 

What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone, 

As if the Shepherd who from outer cold 

Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold 

Were careful for the fashion of his crook. 

There is no broken reed so poor and base, 
No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, 
But he therewith the ravening wolf can chase, 
And guide his flock to springs and pastures new ; 
Through ways unlooked for, and through many lands, 
Far from the rich folds built with human hands, 
The gracious footprints of his love I trace. 

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, 
That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away 
And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, 
To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? 
Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, 
That with thy idol-volume's covers two 
Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God? 

Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-tones 
By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, 
Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains 
Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought, 
Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, 
Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire 
To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. 

God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; 
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor; 
There towers the mountain of the Voice no less, 
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, 
Intent on manna still and moral ends, 
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore. 



Lowell — The Life of Faith 149 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; 

Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, 

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, 

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, 

Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. 

"The Black Preacher" is steeped in the poet's 
belief in judgment and is grim and strong. 

" An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1876" expresses 
honest fast faith in a nation's God, and is tense as 
Kipling's "Recessional." 

"After the Burial" fails us. Lowell had not 
wings to rise against the tempest of mighty winds. 
He had heartbreak. May chance this poem is his 
first anguish, which would assuage when faith 
once more caught on the Rock. I cannot tell. His 
limitations are on him and his faith is shadowed 
like a landscape covered with a cloud. In this 
poem faith and unfaith mix. Sad and very pitiful; 
and his heartache was very bitter and fitted to 
make men die. 

But " L'Envoi" is wiser and more true: 

Whether my heart hath wiser grown or not, 
In these three years, since I to thee inscribed, 
Mine own betrothed, the firstlings of my muse, — 
Poor windfalls of unripe experience, 
Young buds plucked hastily by childish hands 
Not patient to await more full-blown flowers, — 
At least, it hath seen more of life and men, 
And pondered more, and grown a shade more sad; 



150 Lowell — The Life of Faith 

Yet with no loss of hope or settled trust 
In the benignness of that Providence 
Which shapes from out our elements awry 
The grace and order that we wonder at, 
The mystic harmony of right and wrong, 
Both working out His wisdom and our good. 

God is open-eyed and just, 
The happy center and calm heart of all. 

And "The Changeling" has more insight and 
wistfully gets closer to God and holds his hand: 

I had a little daughter, 

And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 

To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
That I, by the force of nature, 

Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 

To this wayward soul of mine. 

I know not how others saw her, 

But to me she was wholly fair, 
And the light of the heaven she came from 

Still lingered and gleamed in her hair ; 
For it was as wavy and golden, 

And as many changes took, 
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 

On the yellow bed of a brook. 

To what can I liken her smiling 

Upon me, her kneeling lover, 
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, 

And dimpled her wholly over, 
Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 

And I almost seemed to see 
The very heart of her mother 

Sending sun through her veins to me! 



Lowell — The Life of Faith 151 

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 

And it hardly seemed a day, 
When a troop of wandering angels 

Stole my little daughter away; 
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 

But loosed the hampering strings, 
And when they had opened her cage-door 

My little bird used her wings. 
But they left in her stead a changeling, 

A little angel child, 
That seems like her bud in full blossom, 

And smiles as she never smiled : 
When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 
And I feel as weak as a violet 

Alone 'neath the awful sky. 
As weak, yet as trustful also ; 

For the whole year long I see 
All the wonders of faithful Nature 

Still worked for the love of me ; 
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, 

Rains fall, suns rise and set, 
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 

A poor little violet. 
This child is not mine as the first was, 

I cannot sing it to rest, 
I cannot lift it up fatherly 

And bliss it upon my breast; 
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle 

And sits in my little one's chair, 
And the light of the heaven she's gone to 

Transfigures its golden hair. 

Whittier walks with more firm tread and is surer 



of his way : 



I know not where His islands lift 
Their f ronded palms in air ; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care. 



152 Lowell — The Life of Faith 

Lowell stopped this side of knowledge. His 
faith was militant, not triumphant. 
Browning's 

The best is yet to be 

Lowell did not know. Would that he had sung 
that radiant line; would that he had been able to 
have swung into the meaning and the music and 
the faith, which glow like the sunshine, and 
sing like the rapturous waves! Rabbi Ben Ezra 

knew 

Grow old along with me; 
The best is yet to be, 
The last of life, for which the first was made. 



LOWELL— L'ENVOI 

When we come to "L'Envoi" we must write 
ourselves down rich in debt to Lowell. If he 
flame not highest, he flames high. He was so 
clean, so wholesome, so loyal, so good a lover. 
The sweet, deep love of him is strong as strength, 
and tender as a kiss. Not many love lyrics, what- 
soever way your thought strays as I mention this, 
when taken in connection with the life of him who 
wrote, can be more beautiful than "She Came and 
Went/' Burns sang of love as laverocks do; 
but we cannot forget how slack he was as touching 
lovers' promises. The kiss upon his lips is salt 
with tears spilled from the eyes of broken-hearted 
women. But Lowell's loves are clean as Lowell's 
life; so his love songs make us laugh and weep all 
in one. 

As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 

So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, 
The blue dome's measureless content, 

So my soul held that moment's heaven ;- 
I only know she came and went. 

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps 
The orchards full of bloom and scent, 

So clove her May my wintry sleeps; — 
I only know she came and went. 
i53 



154 Lowell — L'Envoi 

An angel stood and met my gaze, 
Through the low doorway of my tent; 

The tent is struck, the vision stays; — 
I only know she came and went. 

O, when the room grows slowly dim, 

And life's last oil is nearly spent, 
One gush of light these eyes will brim, 

Only to think she came and went. 

He loved men. He enjoyed democracy. He 
loved his friends with a stout, wholesome love. 
He saw Lincoln was " broad prairie," 

Nigh to God and loved of loftiest stars. 

He knew and loved the spirit of essential Chris- 
tianity. He saw life for life's sake. His words 
hacked like a crusader's ax. He groped and 
questioned, not as Guinevere, 

Is it yet too late? 

but, " Is the largest true ? " 

He saw the ethics of Christianity, and loved them. 
He ponders the right behaviors of the soul. 
We cannot learn a coarse word from his lips; for 
he seemed not to know one. He loved the sea, 
the crag, the woodland and the wold, the buttercup 
and violet, the birch, the willow, the hemlock and 
the pine, the river and the sky, the marshes and 
the autumn wind. He saw and loved humor and 
knew the grace of laughter, even the guffaws of it; 
saw humor was philosophy and used it so, and 



Lowell — L'Envoi 155 

knew tears and smiles to be full neighborly. He 

knew 

The deep religion of a thankful heart. 

His heart wanted life and heaven and groped 
toward them with faltering but honest steps. He 
lacked the divine, contagious faith which elimi- 
nates tragedy. He knew not what Saint Simeon 
Stylites knew, who clanged: 

I smote them with a cross. 

Lowell had not a cross, and did not know the 
Christ was God. 



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